A Way With Words
by Soulan
Summary: Set in Boston between 1980 and 1989. Quirky and awkward, Ennis leaves his Kansas farming family to attend Boston University on a scholarship. He meets several characters who are variations of Jack – including his roommate, his girlfriend, and a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee – and one who is his own alter ego, all of whom eventually lead him to the "real" Jack Twist.
1. Chapter 1

The structure of this story is a bit unusual. The Ennis/Jack pairing is there but it takes a long time for them to get together. Many of the important people in Ennis' life - a radio DJ, his college roommate, his girlfriend, a Sri Lankan refugee - are versions of Jack who one by one lead him to the "real" Jack Twist. There are also some tertiary Jacks who make brief appearances in Ennis' life.

The story spans the entire decade of the 80s and each chapter is divided into two parts, both from Ennis' POV: Part A, with third-person narration, begins in May 1987. Part B, with first-person narration by Ennis from the present, begins in the late 70s. At chapter 45, the events in the first chapter of the A part begin to be covered by the B part.

This story has been in progress since 2009 on LiveJournal. Over there, nearly all the chapters have photos, video clips and links at the end. Because of the way I'm writing this, there are discrepancies here and there in the LJ version that became more obvious once the two timelines begin to overlap, which finally began to happen in August 2012. I am tweaking the earlier A chapters now as I go so will be posting a few at a time here. You might want to visit the LJ version to see the illustrations at the end of each chapter. Go to .com

…..

_It wasn't until the tsunami at the end of 2004 that I began to have dreams about Kaj, 15 years after I last saw him. In the first one, we were both racing for shore, terrified, hands linked, our legs churning frantically through the water, him running faster and pulling me. Then we were shoved down and dragged apart. I woke up gasping and crying out, wrapped in Jack's arms. In other dreams, Kaj and I were struggling to keep our heads above the water as we were pushed along with cars and boats and furniture washed out of houses. Jack finally forbade me to read the newspaper or watch the news until the story had moved off the front pages._

_For over ten years, Kaj had simply been my amazing coming out tale, and Jack's how-we-met story, one that we told at dinner parties. I'd moved on so completely that I could barely summon up my feelings from that time. But those dreams made me seek out the tea leaf reader again, who told me Kaj was walking on a white sand beach. And for a few years, Jack and I both found comfort in that._

_But in the spring of 2009, when the Tamil Tigers were crushed, the dreams started again. One morning Jack brought out the photo of Kaj and me – that infamous photo. I knew he meant it was time to finish what I had started. So I framed it, and set it on the dresser next to the one Jay took of Jack and me, standing on the steps of Cambridge City Hall. Then I dug out the notebook, thinking I'd take up where I'd left off. But when I tried to write, I realized I had to go back to the beginning._

**Chapter 1A**

Late May 1987

Ennis Del Mar was about five minutes into his phone conversation with his mother when his upper lip began to itch. He was slumped down onto the enormous gold and purple couch that the previous tenant had left behind when he and Jay moved in to the apartment. The extra long beige phone cord was stretched clear across the living room, the cradle lying on the kitchen floor. Ennis had set it down on the linoleum, walked over and dropped onto the sagging cushions as soon as he'd heard his mother's cheery "Hi honey!" Might as well get comfortable.

It wasn't exactly an itch he felt; more like an irritating tingle that soon spread to his cheeks and neck. He knew the feeling would disappear as soon has he hung up, which should have been an incentive to cut short the call. But he could never do that.

This conversation would very likely feature a preview of the annual Fourth of July family reunion and he'd been dreading it. Once he'd made the mistake of asking why the whole family had to get together twice a year. Wasn't Christmas enough? The silence on the line that followed had stretched out for an eternity and in the end he had filled it with stammered apologies and promises. This time he had a solid excuse not to leave New England but he was braced for an argument.

"Hi Ma. Everybody okay?"

"Well, your dad's hip is a little sore. I can tell by the way he walks. But he doesn't complain, of course, he's just grateful to be alive.

"Let's see, KE's been teaching Tryon to drive the old tractor. You know the one we bought in Texas in 1967? The one you learned on. Oh I wish I had a picture of that! You should see your nephew up there looking so proud!

"But Ennis, the big news is Kathy's expecting twins! A boy and a girl, due in December. Isn't that amazing? Three sets in the family! Christmas will be so exciting this year! Maybe you can bring Jay."

As if. One trip to Kansas had been enough for her. "Well, I'll ask her in a few months," he said.

"I'm so pleased about these little ones because it means that when you and Jay get married and start a family there won't be such a big gap between your oldest and his or her youngest cousins."

_Here we go again_. It was no good reminding his mother that they were only 25 – KE and Kathy were in kindergarten when she was his age. How to explain to her that, in Boston, nobody with a college degree had a kid before they were at least 28. And Jay said she didn't want any at all. He didn't ever say it to Jay, and didn't admit it to his mother, but he did want to be a father someday. Just not now. And the thought of having children with anyone but Jay filled him with a feeling of unease. He didn't like to dwell on that, however. He was counting on her changing her mind. Right now though, he just wanted to change the subject.

"Kathy still working at the hospital?"

As he listened to her describe his sister's work and home life, he gazed out of the side pane of the bow front window that provided a view down the street. The maples were just leafing out, fresh and green. After the heartbreak of cold, rainy April the arrival of May was always a relief. They would enjoy about three weeks of spring before summer hit. Squinting to see past the screen of spider plant leaves, he made out a figure advancing down the block. Jay must have done the Harvard Square-Porter Square-Alewife-Fresh Pond circuit if she was coming from that direction.

"...and then she'll take the last three months off. But all the kids are so looking forward to seeing their city uncle again. We're going to go to Beaver Dunes State Park in Oklahoma this year. The Bakers went there last year and said all the kids had a ball..."

He heard the landlady's Pekinese squealing and whining one floor below, then Jay climbing the stairs and finally the key turning in the lock. When she saw Ennis was on the phone, she smiled and closed the door gently. As she walked past him, heading for the bathroom, she reached out and ruffled his hair; he grabbed the hem of her black t-shirt and drew her toward him. Jay turned to face him, lifting a foot over the cord to straddle it, standing between his knees, then raised her hand to the crown of his head and combed her fingers through the wild tangle of dark blond hair. She was wearing her signature colors, the ones he'd nicknamed her Blue Jay for – black shirt, blue spandex leggings, black hair, blue eyes. He put his free hand on her muscular thigh and kneaded it. She hadn't disgraced herself with her time in the Boston Marathon in April but wanted to do much better in 1988 so she was getting serious about training.

"Uh, Ma," he broke in, "it looks like I won't be able to make it out there this summer. In my first year I only get a week's vacation and I used that at Christmas."

Silence. But he let it hang there this time.

"Oh, Ennis."

He could almost hear her mind scanning through possible solutions to this problem and made a guess at the one she would suggest. But he was ready for it.

"Couldn't you... take the week off without pay?"

His mother had no idea how much he made or what he paid in rent.

"No Ma, because it's also the busiest time of the month and nobody can fill in for me. But don't worry, I'll be there for Christmas."

He heard her make a little sound in her throat that meant, _I'm going to cry when I hang up._

Jay was watching his face, her lips slowly curling up to reveal her little overbite. Suddenly she grasped the phone cord and pulled it tight against her crotch. Then she slid it back and forth, letting the coil slither languorously against the lycra, and made a porn star face, mouthing _oooh baaaybeee_. Ennis feigned shock and poked a finger into her flat, sweaty belly. She grinned and pinched his nose, then stepped away and headed for the bathroom.

When Ennis finally put down the receiver it was with a sense of exhilaration; he relished the prospect of a summer uninterrupted by a trek deep into the heartland. He felt a fleeting regret that he wouldn't see his nieces and nephews, but he'd be there for Christmas.

The bathroom door was ajar so that the cross breeze would suck the hot, moist air out of the open window. He went in and stood at the sink, rubbed a circle on the steamed up glass of the medicine cabinet and studied his head in the mirror. He wouldn't have to let his hair grow out on the sides and back or cut the top, now that he wasn't going home in July. He hoped this style would never die; it suited his permanent bed hair perfectly. He fished the razor comb out of the medicine cabinet and thinned the sides.

"I'm going to let my hair grow out," Jay said, watching him through a gap in the shower curtain as she scrubbed her arms with the loofah. She had the same cut but it looked different because her curls were tighter. The first time he saw it, he'd almost told her it made her look like a poodle, but for once he'd caught himself. Instead, he told her she looked French, which pleased her.

"Why?" He was afraid she'd say_, because I look like a dyke._

"I think I'll get better assignments if I look more mainstream."

"Oh. Like Michael Jackson?"

"Ha ha. I'll just go back to the style I had when we met."

A curly mop, then. He could live with that.

"Hey, that reminds me," he said. "Joe called earlier. He's coming up from Washington tomorrow so you'll have to move your junk off the office couch."

"Why now? I thought summer recess didn't start for at least another month."

"Dunno. He was kind of mysterious about it. Said Barney's gonna give an interview tomorrow that'll be in the _Globe_ on Monday and there might be some fallout from it. He's supposed to come up and see how the district reacts. He'll be here at least a week. You mind?"

"Why should I mind? After all, Joe brought us together," she smiled, suds streaming down her face.

While Jay got dressed, he turned off the oven and took out the Cheesie Beans casserole, the only recipe from Jay's copy of the _Moosewood Cookbook_ that he had mastered. God, at least she wasn't macrobiotic, like the crowd at the Kushi Institute across the hall at work.

"So how'd it go with the peace, love and understanding crowd this morning?" he asked while they were eating.

"What's so funny 'bout that?" she deadpanned. Jay had grown up in Philadelphia, both parents from old Quaker families. She'd stopped going to meeting for worship when she was twelve but during a bout of homesickness in her freshman year at BU she'd gravitated to a small Quaker group on Beacon Hill. After they'd met, Ennis had gone with her to meeting a few times, so he could tell his mother that yes, he attended church. He didn't mention that Society of Friends on the East Coast had no ministers and that you wouldn't even know you were in a church, the room was so plain.

Jay pushed her empty bowl away. "Well actually, there's this project on the national level to create a giant quilt made of panels representing people who've died of AIDS. We're going to make one for Elliot."

"That would be nice."

She snapped her head up and glared at him, her eyes flashing. "There's nothing nice about it, Ennis!"

"Sorry, didn't mean that. It's... it's a good thing—"

"It's a good thing we're doing it because his family would never bother. I'm sure they just want to forget him."

"I sure won't," Ennis mumbled into his bowl. But she had already risen abruptly and taken her own to the sink. She was still for a moment, then turned around and looked at him thoughtfully.

"You know how I told you about people from meeting visiting political asylum seekers in the INS detention center, trying to help them?"

He remembered Jay had made one visit with the group. When the detainees learned she worked for a newspaper it got their hopes up too much, she'd told him, so she dropped out.

"I was thinking, what if you went along and wrote something about it? Maybe try again to get some freelance work in your spare time. I could mention it to one of the _Herald_ editors."

"What kind of help do they give them?" he asked, attempting to at least sound interested.

"Nothing major, really. Make sure they have a lawyer, bring them stamps, toiletries... Just listen to their stories so they don't feel forgotten."

His spoon clinked as he chased a last bean around the bottom of his bowl. Resisting her suggestions of subjects to write about had become second nature to him and he felt a bit guilty about that. "Well, I'll think about it."

In bed that night, as Jay straddled him, riding up and down, he massaged her thighs and firm ass and watched her face, waiting for the right moment to move his thumbs into position. Then he closed his eyes, listening to her pant. Just before his final, hard thrust upwards he remembered her hand gripping the phone cord and pumping up and down, inches from his face.

Chapter 1B

I remember exactly when I believed I finally knew what made me different from everyone else around me. Until I was seven years old the nature of my difference was a mystery to me. It was my second grade teacher who put her finger on it, literally. Miss Johnson was teaching us geography and had pulled down the map of the United States, the one that all classrooms back then had rolled up like a window shade above the blackboard. She tapped her pink fingernail on the dented rectangle that was Kansas and said, "Here we are." Then she explained that we lived in the very middle of the country — the "center of the heartland" she called it, proudly.

I wasn't listening because I'd just had a revelation: I was born in the wrong place. As my teacher's nail scritched against the vinyl, it was as though I could feel that mass of land pressing in around me. I knew our last name meant "of the sea" and somehow had always assumed that the sea was quite nearby, in Kansas terms. An hour away at most. But now I saw that I had no hope of seeing either ocean.

It was a relief to believe my feeling of "otherness" was due to an accident of birth. I was meant to be living on the edge of the land, not marooned in this flat place. When I got home I asked my mother if we could move to Florida, which I'd noticed was the state with the most coastline. She just laughed and said I could visit her there after she divorced my father. She was joking, but the way things were going in our family I couldn't be sure about that.

Even before the accident I couldn't find my place in the family. I didn't hate the same things the rest of them did. My father hated hippies, even though he'd never actually met one. When I was six I saw some on TV and was fascinated by the men's long hair. Afterwards, I pranced around with a dish towel draped over my head, making a peace sign with my fingers, which enraged my dad. He snatched the towel away and snarled "No hippie faggots in this house!" Now, of course, he denies ever having used the f-word with me. But a man like me always remembers the first time he heard it, even if I didn't know what it meant then. There are words whose meaning you come to understand over time without looking them up. But it was many years before I realized that this word had anything at all to do with me.

Right after that incident was when he started pushing me to ambush my older brother and sock him hard, instead of defending me himself when KE beat me. But all the dirty punches did was give my brother a concrete reason to hate me. So instead of hitting, he mocked me for reading when I didn't have to and called me names. But I discovered I could best him in that arena, even though I was five years younger, by flustering him with insults he didn't understand.

My mother hated sinners. "Hate the sin and not the sinner" was not her style. I think a lot of sins she personally couldn't be bothered about, but the fact that her Lord Jesus was offended by them was what infuriated her when she saw or heard about people committing them. How I wished I had someone to stick up for me the way she did for Him! Most evenings she was out meeting with the fire and brimstone crowd, as we called them. Back then, if you joined a group or club, you had to meet the other members face to face, a notion that Junior and Jenny find downright quaint.

You'd never have guessed my sister was my brother's twin, because she was kind where he was mean. Kathy was sweet, not a hater; her refuge from my parents' ranting and my brother's meanness was school. As a social sanctuary that is, rather than an academic one. That's where she led her real life.

My family farmed 20 acres of corn and sorghum in the western part of the state, about 70 miles from the Colorado border. We had two hired hands, and my siblings and I helped of course. But KE hated farm work and fought with my father constantly. He planned to escape to the army as soon as he turned eighteen. Kathy tuned everybody out and placed her hopes on marriage to get her away from the farm. My father had given up on me early on, it seems, because as long as I finished my chores he paid little attention to me. And I learned from my brother's experience that it was better to be ignored. But my father resented having to hire two men instead of just one.

Once I understood that I was living in the wrong place with no possibility of change for a long time, I tried to make the best of it. I pretended we already lived on the sea, that our house was an island. The tractor I learned to drive was a boat in which I explored the ocean surrounding us. The school bus was a yellow canoe taking us to another island. When the corn was high I "swam" through it, parting the scratchy green leaves with my wrists until I reached the center of the sea where I settled on the bottom with a book, my face and arms tingling. I favored stories about people stranded and surviving on their own: _Island of the Blue Dolphins, My Side of the Mountain_, then later _Robinson Crusoe_ and _On Walden Pond_. It was Defoe I was reading the day of the accident.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2A  
May 1987

Ennis didn't own a car. He made deliveries with the _East West Magazine_ van and that was all the driving he cared to do in Boston. As on most mornings, he was cycling along the bike path on the Cambridge side of the Charles River. After a couple of miles he would cross the BU bridge and meander into Brookline. He had the green light as he approached JFK Street, but he glanced to the left to make sure the car cruising alongside him wasn't signaling right. As he entered the crosswalk he heard brakes screech and a horn blare. "Asshole!" the driver yelled after him, and turned right.

That Boston driver couldn't diminish the pleasure that suffused him that morning. The weather was perfect and for 45 minutes, until he reached Brookline Village, he could pretend he was still a student – a time in his life when his future could remain safely vague. He knew the source of his contentment: Joe was back in town, even though the news he'd broken about his boss had unsettled Ennis for some reason.

They had shared an apartment in Brighton after freshman year, and Joe had continued to pay his half of the rent after he moved to DC following graduation. He came back up to Boston for work several times a year; since he lived with his sister in her condo in Washington, he could afford it. When Ennis had given up the apartment to live with Jay in Cambridge, they'd made sure there was space for Joe to crash.

But seeing Joe these past two days had reminded Ennis that he hadn't really gotten anywhere since graduation. Joe liked to joke that it was thanks to Ennis' way with words that he was where he was now, that he owed his job to his best friend. It was Joe's way with people, though, that had helped him navigate the path to Washington.

He coasted into Brookline Village, down Station Street and straight into the loading bay of the old warehouse that now contained offices. He walked his bike onto the freight elevator and rose to the third floor, where he locked it to the radiator down the hall from the _East West_ door. Then he fished a clean black t-shirt from his knapsack and changed into it. MISSION OF BURMA was stenciled in red letters across the front, a memento of his early college days. It was the birthday of Tina, an assistant editor who wore only black day in and day out; the rest of the staff secretly agreed to come to work dressed in that color to mark the occasion.

When he walked in the door, Susan the new receptionist was wearing a black turtleneck and a long black skirt. Don the circulation manager, with whom Ennis shared the first office immediately off the reception area, had the _Globe_ open on his desk and was sipping coffee from a black mug as he turned the pages. As befitted a geezer like Don, (as Ennis jokingly called him) he was clad in a black polo shirt and black suit pants instead of a rock band t-shirt and black jeans.

"Has she noticed?" Ennis asked. He tried to see which section of the paper Don was reading.

"She's not in yet." Don set down his mug and made a face. "Susan brought in soy milk for the coffee. Everybody's bitching about it."

"Gee, I wonder why she thought we'd go for _that_."

Lureen swanned into their office, all black tights, black mini skirt, black silk blouse, black suede vest, long black hair and red lips. Don folded the newspaper and sat up straight while Ennis reconsidered the verb. All the swans he'd ever seen were white so that didn't fit. He tried to think of an elegant or long legged bird that had black plumage.

"You look great in that outfit, Lureen."

Ennis thought Don might have more luck with that line if he didn't use it on her every day. He always moaned to Ennis that he was out of her league. Ennis never said so, but he objected to using baseball metaphors to talk about women.

Before she could respond, they heard the front door open. Through the doorway, Ennis saw Susan look up and her eyes widen. Lureen shifted her stance ever so slightly as she glanced toward the front desk and Ennis noticed her lips twitch into a half-smile. It must be the color separation house rep, he thought. The guy looked like a model, or a movie star.

"Can... can I help you?" Susan stammered.

"It's alright, he's going back to the art department," Lureen drawled. She smiled sweetly at the man, who flashed his perfect teeth and winked at her as he walked past and down to the end of the hall. Susan looked toward the three of them and fanned herself, her eyes wide.

Lureen rolled her eyes. "Looks aren't everything," she sighed as she turned and headed back to the advertising department.

"Easy for her to say," Don muttered. The thing was, Lureen really was out of Don's league, and Ennis' too. She was the same age as Ennis, so fifteen years younger than Don, but she made a lot more money. Ennis suspected she might even be married, based on a remark he once overheard outside the bookkeeper's office. Lureen was a bit mysterious.

"Why don't you offer to give her a foot rub," Ennis suggested to Don, who had a reflexology practice on weekends and evenings.

"I did. I asked her once if she wanted to come in for a session but she turned me down."

Ennis could think of better lines to use to get Lureen's foot in his lap, not that he wanted that for himself. He opened his mouth to offer one up to Don, but then had a thought: maybe he should charge for them.

He'd noticed that all the staff who had no direct role in producing the magazine had sidelines, either because they couldn't live on their _East West_ salary or because their work wasn't interesting, or both. Mary in the mailroom catered parties and Sue drove around authors who came to Boston on book tours.

When Ennis had imagined working for a magazine, his fantasy job had been to be a staff writer or editor, not Distribution Manager. Since graduating, he'd worked at Kinko's Copies, then as a sign painter and of course had written ad copy for those two brothers on the Cape who catered clam bakes – when he wasn't digging the pits. He seemed to be circling around his dream. Working for a magazine reminded him of farming, with the planting and harvesting cycle compressed into one month. But instead of operating the tractor or the combine harvester, he was the guy who trucked the crop to the grain elevators.

Just then he heard the front door open again and the sound of heavy boots clomping across the wooden floor. Tina strode by without glancing into their office and went straight to the one she shared with two other assistant editors. She'd been a student at BU the same time as Ennis but he hadn't known her, though he remembered fondly the girls who were like her, with their black spiky hair and studs and ear cuffs, black rags and Doc Martens. But towards Tina he felt a twinge of unjustified resentment that she had managed to snag an editorial job.

"That's weird, she's wearing a white t-shirt today," Ennis remarked. When Don didn't respond, he glanced over at him.

"Holy shit!" Don had opened the _Globe_ again and was staring down at an article. "Barney Frank is gay?"

"Sure, didn't you know?" Of course, Ennis hadn't known until last night. Joe had told them over pizza about the _Globe_ interview. Ennis had to admit he'd been shocked. How could a dumpy nerdy guy like that be gay?

"Wow, look at this picture. He looks gr— a lot better now." There was wonder in Don's voice as he handed the paper to Ennis.

It was true. Barney Frank had lost weight, cut short his salt and pepper hair (and permed it?) and ditched his horn-rimmed glasses. Even so, he looked nothing like those guys you saw around, the ones with tight jeans, lumberjack shirts, work boots, short cropped hair and mustaches. It just didn't compute.

Jay had asked Joe why Barney had decided to come out now. Because of AIDS, he'd explained. When other congressmen talked of quarantining gay men, he knew he couldn't stay silent. Joe had glanced at Ennis then, for just a fraction of a second.

Ennis focused on his work for a while, then went to use the photocopier which was located just outside the art department. Tina came out of the editorial office. She glanced at his chest.

"Oh, Mission of Burma! God that takes me back. I've never seen you wear that before."

He grinned down at her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she stepped past him into the art department.

"Oh my god!" Tina began laughing, her hands on her head.

He moved behind her and saw the art director standing by the light table next to the color separator guy, whose yellow tie and blue shirt screamed out in the room. Her frizzy red hair was shockingly vibrant against her black dress, while the two designers looked like vultures bent over their drawing boards. The typesetter emerged from her room, swathed in black leggings and tight tunic.

"OH! MY! GOD!"

Other staff people began popping out of their offices, grinning, and soon Tina was bent double with laughter.

"Oh, this was planned?" the color separator guy asked bemusedly. "I noticed all the black but I was afraid to say anything, in case someone had died."

At lunchtime they all went across the street to Bertucci's, where they'd reserved a long table. As they were ordering pizzas, the waitress said to Lureen, "Excuse me... are you all, like... _witches_ or something?" and everybody cackled.

Riding home that evening, Ennis calculated the number of months he'd had his job. By the time his birthday came around in the fall, would the rest of the staff have noticed that he wore black to work every day, too?

Chapter 2B

The summer I was 12, when KE and Kathy finished high school, my parents missed a curve racing home from Garden City. It was the only bend in Route 83 and they drove that way often, but they'd heard a tornado had touched down out our way, and when we didn't answer the phone they feared the worst. The three of us saw the twister a mile away – the first one we'd ever seen from the house – and hid in the storm cellar. It passed to the north of us, but when we finally came out, the sheriff was just coming up the drive.

The accident changed everything. My parents spent three months in rehab; suddenly, KE and Kathy were needed. They turned 18 in August but hardly noticed. My sister canceled her engagement and my brother threw away the army recruitment forms. We brought in the harvest ourselves, my father giving orders over the phone to my brother each morning and evening from his hospital bed. He needed KE to be a man then, and my brother came through for him.

Kathy took over everything my mother had done, as well as cared for both of them when they finally came home in October. She was good at nursing, and when my parents were back on their feet she left home to make a career of it.

Not much changed for me at first. I had more chores, but not more responsibility, and in September I returned to school. But now it was my sister who packed my lunch and drove me to the bus stop. In the evening my brother asked me about my day. It seemed as though my siblings had suddenly turned into nicer versions of my mother and father.

But when my parents finally came home, they were different people. Once Dad saw that his offspring actually could run the farm, he relaxed. Mellowed, you could say. For that first year he could hardly walk, so he sat on the front porch or in the kitchen in the winter, and learned to play guitar and sang Hank Williams songs while my brother spent the day in the fields.

Before, her church and its causes had been the center of my mother's life. But to our surprise, she continued to stay home on Sundays even once she could walk and didn't return the calls of her old groups of anti-this that and the other. What a relief not to hear about Jesus every day! We asked her why.

"You remember that poster I had on the wall about the two sets footprints in the sand and whatnot?"

Sure, we remembered, glancing at each other. _Whatnot?_ The one where Jesus is supposed to have carried you when you see only line of footprints; we'd noticed it was gone.

"Well, when I was in the hospital I realized that it was you kids who needed the carrying just then. I had enough help from the nurses and doctors. So I told Jesus to leave me be but would He please make sure you had good weather to get the corn in. And see? It all went well. So now I know that when you're in pain, it's better to ask Jesus to go help the people you're depending on.

"Now Ennis honey, go through that bag of yarn and pick out the colors you want for the sweater I'm going to knit for you after I finish Kathy's."

I must have been happy then, right? I was at first. What kid wouldn't be thrilled to have his ornery dad and distant, distracted mom change practically overnight into attentive, affectionate, guitar-playing, sweater-knitting parents? During the months that they were invalids, I basked in their attention. Before and after school I spelled Kathy, fixing Mom cups of tea and massaging Dad's feet, which seemed to relieve his headaches. They let me read to them, and we played cards. But I was grateful they couldn't climb stairs, because when I'd had enough of their cheerful company I could escape to my room and they couldn't follow. KE and I had always shared a bedroom but he'd taken over my parents' room while they slept in hospital beds downstairs.

By the following summer they were fully recovered and I was going quietly crazy. As if to make up for the snipefest that had characterized our home life of the previous years, my parents launched a campaign of family togetherness. Every evening featured a different activity: board games, cards, singalongs (Hank Williams), TV ( Happy Days or Little House on the Prairie but never M*A*S*H).

Kathy and KE made the switch effortlessly to this new, benign regime. But they had other things to focus on that my parents respected. Kathy studied biology so she could get into nursing school and of course KE was in charge now, in practice if not officially. All four of them realized we'd been given a second chance as a family and wanted to make the most of it.

But I didn't like how crowded and busy my island had become. "Ennis honey, where are you?" followed me everywhere, my mother's voice ringing out no matter where I was hiding. I had no friends to escape to because... well, ever since I'd understood that I was living in the wrong place I'd lost the knack of making friends. I was quiet, and when I did speak I said the wrong things, whatever came to my head. Like the time in 9th grade I told a girl (admiringly!) that her beautiful, smooth, glossy reddish brown hair looked like raw liver. No wonder she slapped me.

But thanks to all my reading and my odd imagination I could write well, which impressed my teachers. Of course, that did not help me in the friends department. By the time I got to high school, I was desperate for an excuse to stay away from home, and for someone to assuage my loneliness. I found my salvation in baseball and Jack Tornado.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3A**

**June 1987**

Ennis and Jay hadn't seen much of Joe since his arrival a week earlier. Of course there had been the predictable jokes, but reaction to Barney Frank's outing of himself had been mild. Joe had been kept busy nonetheless; he came back to the apartment late each night and in the morning left earlier than Ennis. The Red Sox were playing away that weekend so they couldn't even use a game as a way to spend some time alone together.

On this final evening of his stay, Joe was treating them to dinner at Grendel's Den in Harvard Square. Jay and Joe sat side by side across from Ennis at the rectangular wood table, and as they studied their menus, Ennis studied his friend, mulling over the changes. The wide-eyed, spiky-haired joker he'd met his first day in Boston was long gone; Joe took politics seriously now – he'd joined the family business. Ennis was sure he would rise higher than his parents had, or even his sister, if he wanted it enough. Joe claimed he wasn't interested in running for office, that he preferred working behind the scenes, but Ennis wasn't sure he believed him. He could easily imagine Joe's handsome face on a campaign poster.

In college, Joe had taken few things seriously – everything aside from politics was a lark. Considering the reputation for wit of the congressman he worked for, Ennis was sure there was plenty of scope for fooling around. Except that now he mustn't put it that way. He couldn't help wondering, though, if Joe had been hired for his looks and charm. Because it was Ennis who had given him the words that opened those doors.

_You jerk. Joe would've gotten this far anyway, without your input. It's your own fault you haven't._… He was relieved when the waiter appeared and derailed his train of thought.

"Whatever happened to Tracy, Joe?" Jay asked suddenly, as soon as the waiter had left with their orders. "You haven't said a word about her in at least a year."

Ennis set down his beer and glanced at Joe. He'd wondered too, but hadn't wanted to utter her name. He found it easy to pretend she'd never existed.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? We split up," Joe replied, so casually Ennis winced. "She's dating a guy who works for a state senator in Pennsylvania now."

"I bet he's a Republican," Jay laughed, nudging him with her elbow.

"Yeah, he is – and viciously ambitious too, so they're a perfect match. He plans to run for a Pennsylvania seat in the House in 1990."

This was the first time Ennis had heard Joe use the very words the rest of his friends did to describe Tracy and he allowed himself a tiny smirk. Since Joe couldn't see her face, Jay answered it with an eye roll.

"Is he from Philly? What's his name, so I can start badmouthing him now," she said.

Over Jay's shoulder, at the next table, Ennis noticed a fortyish man with a salt and pepper beard turn his head to listen. Then he leaned forward and whispered something to the woman opposite him. Not again. It was amazing how often this happened whenever they ate out in Cambridge.

"He's from Pittsburgh. Rick Santorum." Joe looked at Ennis and grinned. "Remember that name. I bet you can come up with something good. I mean, baaaad."

Joe's smile full on him, and the memories the conversation evoked, warmed Ennis but gave him a pang as well. If only the Sox were in town. He picked up his beer and raised the bottle to Joe.

"Meet me at Fenway Park in three years and I'll give you a line," Ennis said, mock seriously though he made a mental note of the appointment.

Then their food arrived and Jay steered the conversation to the visits with refugees she had arranged for Ennis, and the article he (she, really) hoped would make it into print.

"Do it, Ennis," Joe urged him, leaning toward him. "Make that degree work for you. You have such a way with words. You're letting it go to waste."

Halfway through the meal, Ennis saw the bearded man get up and walk a few steps to their table. The man stood behind the empty chair next to him and bent deferentially toward Jay.

"Excuse me, I just want to say how much my wife and I love your show."

Jay looked up at him and smiled apologetically. "I'm really sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not Terry Gross."

Jay's voice sounded exactly like that of the host of an interview show on a Philadelphia public radio station. It had just gone national and Cambridge seemed to be full of people who were regular listeners.

The man straightened quickly and looked abashed. "Oh god, excuse me. It's just that she's in Philadelphia and—"

"It's alright, I get that a lot lately," Jay said, flapping her hand. "It's kind of an honor, because she's such a great interviewer."

The man apologized again and slunk back to his table, where Ennis could see his wife was smiling wryly.

"Haven't you ever just pretended to be her?" Joe said in a whisper, leaning toward Jay but loud enough for Ennis to hear. He had been a witness to this little scene several times.

"Don't ever do it," Ennis said to her. She stared back solemnly; they both knew she wouldn't – his words were for Joe.

"Why, what would be the harm? It would make the guy happy," Joe said with a grin.

Ennis frowned. Joe had been in Washington too long. "Someday he'd see her photo and feel like a fool," he mumbled.

"She's on radio. When would he ever see her picture?"

Ennis felt his anger rise at Joe's shrug and then fade when he felt Jay's foot rub against his ankle.

"Forget it." He'd never told Joe about Chris Perkins.

After dinner, they went around the corner to The Casablanca for a few beers and then lingered among the throngs in Harvard Square, watching the jugglers and musicians and magicians. A young English guy with a bowler hat and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows did sleight of hand tricks that made the small crowd of spectators gasp. The three of them lingered a long time because Jay insisted on taking pictures; she wanted to show his hands as a blur as he slid around on his little table first thimbles, then tea cups, and finally tin cans that hid a bean, a cherry and an apple respectively. Not one person could pick the cup with the fruit under it no matter how carefully they had watched his lightning-fast movements. And when he lifted all three cans, there was no apple to be seen.

They each put a dollar in his hat, then walked the mile and a half home, Ennis and Jay tipsy and laughing. Joe was drunk. He stumbled between them, his arms draped over their shoulders. They each had an arm around Joe's waist, their forearms pressing together; Ennis held him tightly. _What has happened to the friend that I once knew_, he hummed the tune in time to their steps.

"Bet that cockney accent was fake," Joe giggled and bumped his head against Ennis', his whiskey breath hot in his ear. " S 'ard innit? Try again mate!"

Chapter 3B

Like all the kids out where we were, I got my driver's license as soon as I possibly could - the day of my 16th birthday. Once Kathy had left for nursing school and KE was no longer a boy, my parents focused all of their loving attention on me. I was desperate to find an excuse to stay away from the house. None of the school clubs interested me, so that left sports. Of those available, I chose baseball because unlike football and basketball and hockey, it involved more thinking than running around. I had spent many hours watching Cardinals games on TV with Dad since the accident; now I studied the players intently, searching for my place in the game.

In the fall of my junior year I tried out for the team and was made catcher, as I'd hoped. It wasn't a natural position for me physically, because it's hard for a tall guy to hunker down close to the ground. But I was already good at reading people. I quickly mastered how to frame my catches, fooling the umpire into thinking I'd caught a strike. I could size up the batter before me in seconds, knowing from the cant of his hips or the way his muscles flexed as he gripped the bat how he would swing. I liked wearing the mask and all that padding, and the way the pitcher stared at my fingers between my thighs as he read my signals. Why, then, did I never learn to read _myself_?

For Christmas, my parents gave me a small cassette player the size of a shoebox. It came with a single white earphone on a long, thin wire. Kathy had once given me an old style stethoscope with a bell end; I taped the earphone to it so I could pretend I was listening in stereo. It had a radio too, which was just as well because I had no tapes of my own. At night I could tune in stations from far away. That's how I found the University of Kansas radio station and Jack Tornado.

Late one Sunday night when I couldn't get to sleep, I lay in bed and slowly turned the dial, searching for something other than country music. Just before midnight I suddenly came upon a deep, harsh woman's voice singing, almost speaking, words that would make no sense to normal people; the song seemed to go on for a long time. But I already knew I wasn't exactly normal and the words sliced through me. The next day I could recall only "Dip in to the sea, to the sea of possibilities." At the end of the song, a young announcer said the name of it and of the singer but there was a burst of static and I couldn't make out his words. Then he signed off, and I did hear him say "This is Jack Tornado saying cheerio till next time." _Cheerio?_ I didn't believe for a minute that Tornado was his last name, but I did believe in "Jack."

Every night that week I tried to find him again. At last, at 11:00pm the following Sunday night I caught his voice, just the last few words before a song. The music he played on his show wasn't what kids at my school listened to. It was rougher and stranger. He played four songs with no interruption. Finally he spoke, gave the call letters KJHK at KU and a phone number for requests. As I rummaged in the bedside table drawer for a pen I whispered the number over and over. Found a pencil stub and wrote it on a scrap of paper, then crept downstairs. It was cold in the kitchen so after I punched the number on the wall phone I stretched the long cord around the corner into the living room. I sat down on the couch in the dark, pulling one of my mother's knitted afghans over me.

Jack "Tornado" realized I was a high school kid right away but he was kind to me. He asked why I was whispering, and when I explained where I was, he didn't laugh, though he did when I confessed that I wanted him to replay the song from the previous Sunday so I could tape it. He said he'd give me time to get back up to my room. It was his last song again, and he introduced it by saying "I ended with Patti Smith last week, but I'm playing the same track again for Dennis, a new listener, because it speaks to him. Now here's Horses. Night all." I blushed, alone in the dark, because I hadn't told him that. Even though he'd missed my name, he'd heard me.

For the rest of my junior year I tuned in to Jack's show every Sunday night, no matter how tired I was, and taped each one. I discovered Patti Smith, the Talking Heads, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Devo, Joy Division. I worked up the nerve to call Jack again and again, lying on the couch in the dark while my miniature boombox upstairs recorded his show. He didn't mind, said he had few listeners. At first we exchanged comments about the music until he had to change the track. Then I told him where I lived and it turned out he was from a farm family, too, from up near the Nebraska border. Eventually I gave more details about my family and my life; after that, Jack always called me back to spare our phone bill. I put the ringer on very low so as not to wake my parents. Soon he was just leaving the receiver on the table while making announcements, so we could pick up where we'd left off. Curled on the couch during that pause I imagined I was the phone, lying on my side near him, listening. At the end of his show, he would amaze me by playing a song whose lyrics had some bearing on what we'd talked about.

I lived for Sunday nights. All through the week I would save up anecdotes to entertain Jack, who laughed with me. I had many mates, of the class and team variety, but he was my only friend. Once he had my number I had hopes – fantasies – that he would call me at other times but he never did. I built up an image of him in my mind, though I had absolutely nothing to go on as he never said one thing about his appearance. But because of his warmth and easy confidence I presumed he looked nothing like me.

One night in May, he asked me where I planned to go to college. He just assumed I would, which flattered me, but that's a sign of how little self-awareness I had. I told him I guessed I would go to KU. But to my chagrin he wasn't pleased.

"Ennis, if you're into this music you should get out of Kansas. Go to school in a city, like Chicago or on one of the coasts. Boston has a great music scene and there're like a million colleges there. There's bound to be one that'll take you. In fact, if you're as smart as you sound, they'll snap up you up in the name of geographical diversity. Maybe even give you a scholarship."

I'd had this vision of meeting him at last once I got to KU, of becoming friends for real. Jack must have read, yet again, the thoughts behind my silence because his voice turned gentle.

"I won't be here by then, Ennis. I'm graduating and this is my last show."

I felt my little balloon of happiness fill with lead and sink. I hadn't known he was a senior. But just as I was about to ask him where his family lived, he dropped a bigger bomb.

"Fact is, I'm flying to London on Friday. There's a kind of exchange program that gives a certain number of Americans who just graduated six month work permits in Great Britain and an equal number of British graduates get permits to work over here. I applied and got one of those. I'm hoping to find a way to stay longer if I like it there."

I was still processing this loss, in my mind's eye watching him recede into the distance. But now I was aware that there could be an escape route for me, too.

"Well, uh, good luck in England," I croaked out.

"Thanks. It's been... thanks for your calls and... well, try and get away from here, okay? Now go to bed and I'll play a song just for you. 'Night, Ennis. "

"Goodbye, Jack." I rolled off the couch, padded back into the kitchen and hung up the phone. Back in my room, I flipped the tape over and crawled into bed. Then I put on the stethoscope to listen to the final minutes of the show.

_Just a castaway, an island lost at sea, oh..._

I sat up, my eyes welling. I didn't hear Jack's final sign-off because by that time I was crying. For the first time in my life someone really got me. And now he was gone.

….

The song: /5G2LtPvPemw


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4A**

**July 1987**

_Do it, Ennis_. Two weeks after Joe returned to Washington, on a Saturday afternoon before July 4th, Ennis walked from the Government Center subway stop, under the Central Artery overpass and down Hanover Street through the North End toward the harbor. An older woman wearing dark trousers, a Hawaiian shirt and a long, gray ponytail met him at the entrance to the Coast Guard station, which was next to the naval base in which the INS detention center was housed. Seeing her, he was glad he had thought to remove his earring and dressed neutrally in blue jeans and a plain, white button-down shirt, because in his usual garb they would have made a strange pair. He spared a thought for his family, greeting each other with hugs and firing up the grill somewhere in Oklahoma, and was surprised to feel a tiny tug of regret.

They entered the main building and approached the guard standing behind an imposing, circular desk. When Carolyn explained their mission he phoned over to another building, where another guard would meet them and escort them upstairs. As they walked between the buildings, she explained they would be visiting a group of three Iranians. They had refused to fight in the war with Iraq; two had been tortured, a third was Kurdish, which brought its own set of problems. One spoke English well, one much less, another not at all. Each had fled the country and attempted to enter the United States through Boston on false passports.

Carolyn had brought news magazines, paper and stamped envelopes, soap, dried dates, figs, apricots. Over time, the group of six middle-aged and older Friends who had begun the visits had been reduced to four and they divided the nationalities among themselves. After the two of them had been led upstairs in the second building, Carolyn's bag was searched while they presented IDs and wrote down their names and addresses and the names of the men they were to there to visit. Then they were directed to a plain, fluorescent-lit room furnished with worn formica-top tables and metal folding chairs. The guard surveyed the room through a large window.

When he'd first spoken to her on the phone the previous week, Carolyn had explained to Ennis that an Episcopal priest without a parish had convinced the director to let her act as the detention center chaplain. She conducted a service there on Sundays for any detainees who wished to attend, and Reverend Beers passed the names of new asylum seekers to the Quaker group. Most of the eighty detainees were resident aliens with criminal charges, mainly South Americans, who had finished a prison sentence in the US and were about to be deported. The rest, about fifteen men from the Middle East and South Asia, had entered the country illegally, been caught and had subsequently filed asylum applications.

Ennis was nervous about meeting men from Iran. The word recalled images of blindfolded hostages and screaming, bearded Muslims that had dominated the news in his last year of high school. So when the three men shuffled in wearing slippers and mustard yellow jump suits, he was shocked. They were docile and polite, but also clearly startled to see a friendly young face. Carolyn introduced Ennis but didn't say he was there to write about them. She asked about the progress of their cases, which was slow. They had been in detention for several months and were sick of being in limbo, surrounded by people who didn't understand them. And, Ennis sensed by their interaction, by compatriots with whom they had only nationality in common. He felt a sudden, surprising empathy with them.

In early August he made another visit, this time with a middle-aged woman named Gail who had taken charge of the Afghans. They wouldn't have as much trouble winning asylum in the US because of the Russian invasion of their country, she explained. The two young men they met were educated and from well-off families. Even Ennis could tell that a judge would be disposed to letting them stay in the country.

As he and Gail were ending their visit and saying goodbye to the men, Ennis saw a lone woman greet the guard and sign the log book. She was short and slight, in her mid-forties with a pleasant face but a determined expression.

"That's Reverend Beers," Gail murmured. "She says she welcomes our support but I think she really only tolerates us."

From the other side of the glass, the priest noticed Ennis and eyed him curiously.

"Hello, Gail," Rev. Beers greeted the other woman when she entered the room. "I see you have a new visitor in your group." She gave him a searching look.

"This is Ennis Del Mar," Gail replied neutrally. He offered his hand and the priest shook it perfunctorily.

"You explained the rules to him, Gail?"

"I believe Carolyn did, Alma."

"I have a good relationship with the director so I'm able to gain favors for some detainees," she said to Ennis. "Sometimes he'll release them early, before the paperwork is complete, if they've had a favorable judgment. If there are any… complications with the visitors, it gets back to him and I have to smooth things over."

Ennis nodded, wondering about the complications and why her expression as she stared at him was almost wistful.

"We're just leaving. Goodbye Alma, have a good holiday," Gail said, turning away.

"Uh, you don't seem to be that friendly with her, for someone on the same side," Ennis remarked once they were outside.

"Reverend Beers doesn't know what to make of us. The Episcopal church is real hierarchical and the Society of Friends is the complete opposite. She'd be more comfortable with us if she knew there was a leader to complain to."

That night he added some notes to the ones he'd written after the visit to the Iranians, but he didn't feel inspired by this subject. Still, Jay was pleased and his co-workers were interested in what he was doing, which made him a bit nervous – he wasn't used to discussing his personal life at work. He would go one more time.

Chapter 4B

"_So glad you could come to Lawrence for this interview, Ennis. I know it's a long drive from out where you are, but it's easier than going all the way to Boston, isn't it? I'll just clear these books away so you can sit. My office here is bigger than the one I had at BU but it's just as cluttered._

"_I probably shouldn't tell you this, but apparently the admissions committee was very impressed with your essay. Asking applicants to write about a significant life experience is pretty standard but they thought yours was awfully original. Very shrewd of you to draw on that story. You obviously guessed that none of them up there have ever been within two states of Kansas so of course everything they know about it is from the movie. You know, I've been here for four years and I've never seen a twister but I never mention that to my friends back east. And to think your mother's name really is Dorothy. Have your parents made a full recovery? I'm relieved to hear it. Your brother and sister were real troopers. You're lucky to have a family like that._

"_I'm not surprised you're interested in the College of Communication. You certainly have a way with words. Tell me more about what you want to major in."_

When I told my parents in the fall of my senior year that I wanted to go to college in Boston instead of KU, they were shocked. My father wanted to know where I thought they'd find six thousand dollars a year to pay for it but it was the distance that distressed my mother. Lawrence was a five-hour drive - wasn't that far enough away for me? What was the name of this college in Boston, anyway?

I told them that if you counted every single school there were over forty colleges around Boston but the only one I was interested in was Boston University. Its College of Communication, specifically.

"You want to study what?"

"Uh, mass communication is the major, I'm thinking."

"_You_?"

Naturally I was indignant at their skepticism. But isn't that the way of teenagers? When Junior said he wanted to be a cop, didn't he get mad when I laughed?

But I was determined. I'd done well on the SATs and my grades were good. At night in bed I flipped through the catalog studying the pictures of the campus, which was right in the middle of the city. I stared for hours at the pictures, returning again and again to the photo of the Charles River, imagining myself on one of the little sailboats. I spent several weeks working on my essay, and rounded up teacher references. I decided to request early decision, so I would know my fate as soon as possible.

Two weeks after I posted the application, I had a call from an English professor at the University of Kansas. I had written that I wasn't able to travel to Boston for an interview. He had taught at BU for several years so they'd asked him to conduct it if I could get to Lawrence.

So one day in early November my parents let me use the truck to make the five-hour trip to the eastern border of the state. The interview seemed to go well. Afterwards, I wandered around the campus, trying to imagine myself there because it was where I would wind up if BU rejected me.

At the side entrance of the Student Union I noticed a sign: KJHK. I went in and found myself alone in a small reception area. On a bulletin board were various notices and, to one side, snapshots of the student DJs for that semester. Near them, arranged in a column, were formal group shots of the DJs for each of the previous ten years with their names typed on a slip of paper tacked underneath the picture. I studied the group from 1978/79, looking for Jack; or rather, a student who resembled the image of him I'd formed in my mind. None of them matched it, and none of them was named Jack. Maybe he hadn't been there for the photo session.

"Hi! Are you here to audition for a slot?" A girl stood in the doorway leading to the studio.

"No, just... visiting the campus. I... used to listen to Jack Tornado's show last year."

She walked over and looked at the picture. "That was Chris Perkins," she said, pointing to one of the students. "His show was pretty popular, considering when it was on."

But I barely heard her; the guy she'd pointed to looked nothing at all like my fantasy. Red spiky hair, wire rim glasses perched above a long, sharp nose that swerved to the left. He was grinning and his teeth were crooked. He was even skinnier than me.

"His name wasn't Jack, then," I mumbled. I felt suddenly bereft; my friend hadn't just flown away, he'd vanished completely.

"No, that was just his handle. Doesn't look as dashing as that, does he?" she laughed. "He was a nice guy, though. Someone used to call him up during every show last spring and tie up the request line so nobody could get through. He said it was his girlfriend. We didn't have the heart to tell him to cut her off because I think she was the only one he'd ever had. Hey, are you okay?"

On the long dark drive home I tried to will my teenage heart into carelessness. After all, hadn't I lied about my family on my application? But then, Chris Perkins had told me no lies. Though he'd made up a new name for himself, his voice and his concern for me were real. Maybe we would have been friends if we'd met, but only if we'd been thrown together alone on a desert island. I avoided other misfits – I wanted to belong.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5A**

Ennis let the rest of August and September slip away with little thought for the men in the detention center. Contrary to what he'd told his mother, he did manage to eke out some extra vacation days. As the newest hire, Jay wound up with the worst six-week shift that summer, working weekends, so he took advantage and worked a few Saturdays himself. A friend of hers on the Cape, a former co-worker at the _Cape Cod Times_, had asked if they'd be willing to come down and stay in their house to look after the dog while he and his wife were away on vacation the last week of August and they'd jumped at the chance.

Ralph-pronounced-Rafe irritated Ennis with his British accent; he didn't say much but seemed to expect that every American he met was ready to swoon over the few words he did utter, which were usually preceded by "When I wrote for the _Daily Mirror..."_ If that paper was so great, why was he still over here? His American wife, Shalawn, made up for him by talking a blue streak. She was so irritating, Ennis couldn't understand how Jay had stayed friends with Ralph after he married her.

During that week Ennis ran into one of the two brothers he'd worked for the summer after he graduated. They catered clambakes for large beach parties and Dave had just put his back out; Tim practically begged Ennis to help out for the remaining weekends of the season, which stretched well into September. The money was good and it was fun working with Tim so he drove down on Friday evenings and spent the night at his boss' house. Out of guilt for having missed the family reunion, he had Tim take photos of him digging the fire pit, laying seaweed on the hot rocks and placing crates of lobsters and clams on top. These he mailed to his mother for her photo album.

None of his family had ever visited Boston since he'd lived there, not even to attend his graduation. He'd understood why – the distance, the expense, the season – and hadn't been hurt though Joe and Jay had been indignant on his behalf. If not for Jay, he might have returned home... no, who was he kidding? He could never live there again. But would Boston ever feel like his home? He probably wouldn't know until the day came when Jay wanted to move on from the _Herald_. She aspired to become a star photographer and win a Pulitzer, like Stan Grossfeld at the _Boston Globe_, but that meant she would have to find a place at the number one newspaper in a different city. Her dream was to make a name for herself.

The fact that his career had stalled out bothered him more often these days. The truth was, it had never gotten going in the first place. Jay was urging him on, but he could sense the beginnings of lassitude on her part. So after the final clambake weekend, he got back in touch with the Quakers.

He found out that one man was visiting a group of Sri Lankans on weekday evenings. That could be an interesting change, going midweek and late in the day, so Ennis contacted him and arranged to meet him the following Wednesday at six o'clock at the usual place.

That afternoon, though, the man called him at work to tell him he was down with bronchitis and would have to cancel. But Ennis had been twice already and knew the routine, so maybe he'd like to go on his own this time? One of them had some important documents to give to his lawyer and he had agreed to deliver them. Would Ennis at least pick those up?

Well Ennis couldn't say no, could he? So he left his bike at work and took the Green Line to Government Center and made what turned out to be the first of many, many walks through the North End to the Coast Guard Station.

Chapter 5B

In early December I came home from school to find my mother waiting for me at the kitchen door. Instead of her usual smile she wore a grim expression.

"There's a big envelope from Boston University over there," she said accusingly, pointing toward the kitchen table as if a wild creature had crept in and settled on top of it. The package was lying askew, not set neatly at my place like my other mail.

I dropped my knapsack and sat down at the table, ripped open the fat parcel and read through all the papers. My mother remained by the door, watching me silently, a tea towel wrapped tightly around her fist.

"I've been accepted," I said when I'd finished reading the last page.

"That's wonderful, honey," she said, with no wonderment in her voice.

"We don't have to pay anything."

"Nothing? Nothing at all? I thought it was a private college."

"It is. But they're offering a bunch of grants, and a scholarship. One of the grants is work-study so I'll have a campus job." I looked up at her. She was twisting the towel with both hands now. "So it's not totally free money." I spoke calmly, but my heart was jumping around in my chest. They really, really wanted me.

"You're sure you want to go that far away."

"Yeah." I ignored the resignation in her voice; I was halfway there already, making plans.

My father's reaction was mild, as usual. He congratulated me, and was pleased that I would be getting a free ride. I was both glad and disappointed that they never asked to see my essay. I wouldn't have dared to let them read it, but weren't they even curious?

To my surprise, the news that I was going off to college out of state, all the way in the east, excited my classmates' imagination. Boston, Washington, New York, Philadelphia... those cities were names in our history books and represented for them the sharp edge of the continent. They were impressed, and I even got invited to a New Year's Eve party. The girl with the raw liver hair was there and she danced with me. When the clock struck midnight she even kissed me. It seemed like an auspicious start to the eighties.

Once my future was set, the year passed quickly. I had a Saturday job in Garden City at the agricultural cooperative, and now I knew that the money I made would be extra cash for me when I got to Boston. Between that and farm chores and baseball practice I had little free time, but I didn't mind. In the spring my parents came to every home game and cheered me on, though they'd learned to do so discreetly. They'd found out the hard way my first year that unless they wanted to hear me called an asshole by other fans it was best not to break my concentration.

I graduated, then spent the summer helping on the farm and working a couple days a week. My mother gave me an old manual Royal typewriter that she'd used in high school to take to college. My father bought me a suitcase.

On Labor Day my parents drove me to Wichita, where Kathy was a nurse in the biggest hospital. They left me at her house and went back the same day. My mother had tears in her eyes when she kissed me goodbye.

That night Kathy brought me to the bus station. The journey would take a day and a half and I'd have to change buses in four cities and stop in a dozen other towns. It had taken forty-five minutes on the phone with Greyhound to sort out my itinerary.

We pulled into the parking lot but after she cut the engine she didn't get out right away. She looked at me with a serious expression.

"Ennis, I want to talk to you about something before you go."

"Right." I expected a lecture about keeping in touch with Mom and Dad, not forgetting the family and all that.

"You haven't had a girlfriend, have you." It wasn't a question because it would be impossible to keep that a secret at our house.

"Ummmm... not exactly." I felt as though I had to make my reply seem at least slightly ambiguous.

"Well, you're bound to have one in Boston, I bet."

I hadn't given it much thought but I answered, "I hope so."

"Make sure you use rubbers."

"Uhh, well I—"

"Herpes, Ennis. You have heard about it, right?"

"Of course."

"Once you get it you never get rid of it."

"Right."

"Use them without fail."

"Right."

"I see kids every day who never thought they'd get it and now they have to cope with these sores every few months for the rest of their lives, all because they thought the girl or boy they slept with looked clean. Or they were afraid to ask. Think about it."

"Right."

She opened her purse. "Here're some now, so you don't have an excuse when the time comes."

"Thanks." I took the box of Trojans from her and stuffed them in my knapsack. I couldn't wait to get away on that bus!

I don't remember very much about that first bus journey east. I had several paperbacks in my knapsack and my mother had packed me a lot of food. I wished I had my little boombox but the stethoscope would have looked strange. It was impossible to sleep for the first 24 hours. I had a series of seatmates for much of that time and the further away from Kansas I traveled, the less that person knew about my state. When I changed buses in Columbus, I sat next to a black guy a few years older than me wearing glasses, a goatee and a Mets cap. He was "riding the dog" as far as New York, where he lived. When I told him which state I called home, he frowned.

"Kansas, huh. That's... next to Wisconsin?"

"It's right in the middle of the country, actually. Below Nebraska. Which is next to Wyoming," I added, since people seemed to have a better fix on that state.

"Oh yeah, they call that the fly-over."

"Who does?" I asked irritably. I was exhausted by that time and getting peeved at having to defend my state, especially as I'd spent most of my life longing to leave it.

"You know, rich people who only spend time in New York and LA," he said.

"You know anything about Kansas, then?"

"What, you think I ain't never watched The Wizard of Oz? It's flat and you got tornadoes." He grinned at me. "And everything's in black and white."

I looked at him. "It's true. There are no colored people in Kansas."

I think it was the fact that I said it with a straight face that saved me. His jaw dropped but after a few seconds he began to chuckle. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists in his lap, shaking with laughter until I had to join in. When he'd calmed down we talked for a few minutes but it was very late and we were both tired. The laughter released some tension in me and I was able to fall asleep at last. When we arrived at Port Authority terminal in Manhattan it was five in the morning and he helped me find my next and final bus, for which I was grateful.

I was asleep as we neared Boston early Wednesday. The sun on my face woke me and I pulled the stiff orange curtain all the way open. We were still on the interstate, but I could see the Boston skyline ahead. I saw what I thought was the sea off to the right, though it was only Massachusetts Bay. I watched a plane flying across the clear blue sky, and when it passed out of sight I lowered my gaze and saw a wondrous thing. We were passing the Boston Gas installation, with its enormous white tanks glowing in the sunlight. One of the tanks looked as though a giant had tipped five different cans of paint over the top of it, leaving red, yellow, blue, green and purple slashes running down the sides. I stared at this tank as long as I could see it and couldn't stop smiling.

Shortly after, we entered the city and wound through narrow streets full of cars inching along and people darting back and forth in front of them. I was trembling with anticipation, or exhaustion, or caffeine; the woman in the seat across the aisle had given me some very strong coffee from her thermos. Horns blared; scraps of white paper danced along the gutters, pushed by a stiff wind. The blue sky I'd seen outside the city had already been invaded by clouds.

The bus pulled into the station, which smelled like all the others but sounded different somehow, the voices sharper. After I retrieved my suitcase and typewriter from the hold, I wobbled toward the exit, my legs stiff. I pushed open the glass doors with my shoulder and emerged into the daylight and gusting wind. A big white taxi was parked at the curb in front of me, the driver half sitting on the hood, smoking a cigarette. He was neither young nor old, pale with a dark goatee and wire rim glasses. He wore a blue Red Sox cap, the kind with a pair of socks as an emblem instead of a B, and I thought he could be the white cousin of my New Yorker seatmate. He was trying to blow smoke rings but the wind snatched them away. When he spotted me blinking in hesitation he flicked the butt to the pavement.

"Need a taxi?" he said.

I was so tired I just nodded and handed him a piece of paper with the address that was my first stop.

"Zatcha dawm?"

"Uuuhhh... what?"

"Seven hunnid Cawm Av. Izzatcha dawmitawry?" *

"Oh. Yeah."

"So yer goin a be _you_."

It took me a few seconds to realize what he'd actually said, but I hoped that what I thought I'd heard was the truth: now I was going to be myself.

.

.

* _700 Comm Ave in Bostonese_


	6. Chapter 6

October 1987

On his way to the detention center, Ennis stopped at his favorite Italian bakery and bought a cannoli. It was kind of a ritual, whenever he was on Hanover Street. He'd tried one at every bakery between the central artery and Commercial Street and had settled on Antonio's, not because they made the best cannoli but because it had been the first place he'd ever tasted one. He bought two and placed the little carton carefully in his knapsack. He'd share them with Jay when he got home.

As Ennis waited for the Sri Lankan men he had come to visit to be brought out, he studied their names, trying to guess how to pronounce them. He hoped their first names, which were designated with just an initial, were simpler.

G. Ragunathan

S. Ravindran

T. Karunarajav

He felt a bit nervous, coming here alone. When he accompanied one of the older women, he realized, he let himself slip slightly out of adulthood while pretending to be a writer. Now he had to act as though he knew how the system worked when the truth was he was baffled by it. Sometimes detainees were transferred to a detention center in another state without warning, he'd been told. He learned that one of the Iranians he'd met had been sent to New York in August and now was back, thanks to the intervention of Reverend Beers. He wondered what help he could really offer these men.

He heard the shuffling of slippers in the corridor, signaling the men's arrival. They entered the room single file in ascending order of height and Ennis quickly took their measure. They all appeared to be in their mid to late twenties. Unlike the other groups he'd seen, their skin tone varied greatly and each one sported a mustache.

The short man was quite light, like a regular coffee; the middle one was like dark chocolate and the third and tallest... it was hard to say. He was kind of between the two, but his complexion seemed to have a different undertone. Tea?

They looked at him quizzically when they saw him, then glanced around the room, obviously looking for their usual visitor. Ennis stepped forward and extended his hand.

"Hi. Um, George is sick so I came instead. My name is Ennis."

Each smiled politely as they shook his hand and said hello. The tea man was almost Ennis' height. Then they took seats around the table, moving very deliberately toward specific chairs. George had been visiting them once a week for two months and had filled Ennis in on the situation in their country – the civil war, the Tamil Tiger guerillas who claimed one son from each family, the arrests and torture – but Ennis had realized he didn't even know exactly where their country was located, just that it was near India. It had occurred to him the day before, when he was cycling past a bookstore, that he ought to find out a bit more about Sri Lanka and he'd even slowed down. But he'd felt reluctant to cram his head with facts before meeting them.

Ennis lay the scrap of paper with their names in front of him. "So who is G. Ragu-nathan?" he asked, sure he was mispronouncing the name.

The short man raised his hand. "Raguna-tan. Ragu is okay."

_Ragu. Tomato sauce colored birthmark on neck_. He was going to need some memory tricks to keep the names straight. But was that his first or last name?

"What does G stand for?"

"Gunaratnam. But that is my father's name."

"You mean your last name?"

"Last one?" Ragu looked to the others for help.

"Tamil people have only one name," explained the tea man, who was sitting opposite Ennis. He noticed his eyes were not exactly the same dark brown as the others, closer to hazel. His face was longer, and handsome in a more Western way. "When the British come they want us to have two names. So we make father's name second name but we put it first. But just write with first letter."

"Uhhh, right. So you are..." He looked at the paper. Tea Man reached right over and pulled it towards him, turning it around.

"That's him," he said, pointing first to S. Ravindran and then to the chocolate man. "Ravi. And that's me." He moved his finger to the third name.

Ennis tugged the paper back and looked at the name, T. Karunarajav. "Then you must be Karu," he said.

"No. Kaj," said the Sri Lankan. "My brother call me that when he's small."

Ravi murmured something to Ragu and they both laughed. Ennis looked at them and saw they were grinning at him. He glanced at Kaj, who smiled broadly.

"He say you look like a big cock."

What the fuck? Ennis felt like he'd been... slapped? Zapped? For the first time in his life he had an inkling of what all those past victims of his malapropisms had felt.

Kaj crowed softly and tugged at his own hair. Oh, a rooster; he'd let his hair grow so long in front so that it flopped onto his forehead, but the sides were still short.

"Why you wearing your hair like that?" Kaj asked.

That was a good question. Ennis had to admit the style was pretty 1983. But would they know that? So he just shrugged, smiled and changed the subject. He asked them when they'd each arrived, and the circumstances. Ragu and Kaj had the same story: flew in to Boston with false passports, then caught in passport control.

Ravi had a somewhat different tale. He had been living in Germany as a refugee with his wife and baby daughter. They'd been denied permanent residence cards and Ravi believed they would never be granted them, so he'd convinced his wife they should try for North America. When they'd changed planes in Dublin, his wife and daughter had been pulled from the line and Ravi had watched helplessly as they were taken away. He'd continued on to Boston, hoping he would be able to settle and bring them over. After getting off the plane, he'd destroyed his passport and identity papers, then presented himself at passport control and requested political asylum.

That had been in June. His wife and daughter had been returned to Germany and he was still "in prison". Ravi took a photo from his jumpsuit pocket and showed it to Ennis. "Everyday I think about them," he said. "My lawyer, I think he forget about me. Can you take these papers to him? My wife sent them. Maybe you can tell him to hurry. I call him every week, sometimes two, three times but nothing happens."

Ravi handed Ennis the manila envelope. The address scrawled on the front was for a law firm near South Station. That was nowhere near his route between work and home so he'd have to make a special trip. On the other hand, he could simply mail it. He put it in his knapsack, to worry about later.

He asked them what they were fed. They were sick of potatoes, they said. Occasionally rice was served rice and when that happened the detainees fell on it. They couldn't stand the bland food. They were used to spices; they could eat a whole chili raw, no problem. They needed soap. It was noisy, the TV was on constantly. They were bored to death. There was a Monopoly game but it belonged to a group of Columbians who spent hours playing. Kaj was trying to be friendly to their leader, hoping he would inherit the game when they left.

Then they had questions for him. Where was his family? Was he married? Did he live in a house? They had no idea where Kansas was. He told them about his Japanese landlady and her little dog, Ginger. They thought this was hilarious, naming an animal after food.

"I had a dog, name Robin," Kaj said when they'd stopped laughing.

"Our dog was name of Jimmy," Ravi volunteered. He said something to Ragu, then: "He say his dog was Sam."

"Not Tamil names?"

They glanced at one another.

"When the British were in Ceylon they had signs on buildings that say No Dogs or Indians Allowed. After independence, Sri Lankan people always give dogs English names," Kaj explained with a grin. "Did you have a dog?"

"Yeah. His name was... was Toto." Ennis seldom mentioned his family's dog's name, out of embarrassment.

"That is nice name," Ravi said and the others nodded in agreement. He went on to talk about the neighbor's dog in Dusseldorf but Ennis barely listened. The Wizard of Oz reference had meant nothing to them – what a relief!

Before he ended the visit, Ennis asked them if they needed anything that he could bring next time. Just soap, they said. He promised to bring some. He promised to come back soon.

**Chapter 6b**

**September 1980**

The taxi driver opened the trunk, took my suitcase from me and swung it in. I kept hold of the handle of my typewriter case and said I'd keep it with me, along with my knapsack. I had never taken a taxi before, but I'd seen how it was done on TV and in movies. As I was opening the door to get in the back seat, I saw walk by the kind of girl I'd only ever seen in Time magazine. Her hair was dyed pitch black and so stiff and spiky it looked as if it could draw blood. Her clothes were various layers of black and she wore black leather studded with metal around her neck and wrists. Her boots were thick and black and her makeup was the same. I felt a stirring, looking at her. Of course now I know why but at that point I was just in awe of her power to do something to me that no girls back home had ever managed: make me hard.

"So whereya from?" the driver asked, glancing at me in the rear view mirror after we'd pulled away from the curb.

"Kansas."

"No kiddin! Hey, you got a friend named Dawthy? Evva seena tawnado?"

"Yeah."

"Really? Up close like?"

"Yeah. One blew our house away and killed my parents."

"Ssshhhit."

"Not really."

"Ha ha. Guess ya get that alla time."

"Well, this is the first time I've been out of Kansas."

"Really? You must be jet lagged."

"Huh?"

"Kansas is like three time zones away, right?"

"No, just one. And I took a bus."

"Sorry, kid. Kansas and all them states out theah's like anotha world, knowwhudumsayin?"

"Yeah, I do."

The part of town we were in looked kind of seedy but very shortly, after two or three turns, we were driving alongside a large, green park behind a black wrought iron fence.

"That's the Public Garden. Ya motha evva read Make _Way for Ducklings_ when you was a kid?"

"No."

"Right. Nevva mind. Anyhow, that's the Ritz Hotel on the left."

"Wow." I'd never heard of it.

We turned left onto a broad boulevard with a wide grass and tree-filled center strip with a footpath.

"This is Commonwealth Avenue. Everybody calls it Comm Av."

I was getting used to his accent surprisingly quickly. Now I stared at the elegant brownstones with growing excitement; I'd be living in one of these beautiful old houses! The streets seemed to be laid out in a regular grid with names in alphabetical order that was reassuringly like Kansas even if the street names themselves - Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford - were not.

"This part here's called Back Bay. It used to be a swamp. They filled it in the 19th century and made these streets nice and regular. The rest of the city ain't like this by a long shot."

After a few minutes we began to leave behind the elegant houses. The trees in the median strip park dwindled in number and then trolley tracks replaced the grass. The taxi driver kept up his chatter, pointing out landmarks that meant nothing to me then, and I was barely listening anyway, too busy taking in the sights and flinching when pedestrians darted across the street against the red light when there was the slightest break in traffic. Suddenly I came to attention when he said a name I did know.

"Now we're in Kenmore Square, home of Fenway Park. We're almost to BU. See that big sign with the triangle?" He waved to his right at a huge square sign very high up that had a red triangle in the middle of a white field. "That's the Citgo sign and if you're ever lost, just look for it cause you can see it from practically everywhere. Usually it's lit up at night but our asshole governor made them turn it off last year. To save money, he says. What a retard! How're the BU students gonna find their way back when they're drunk outta their minds?"

I hoped my roommate liked baseball because I wanted to go to a game at Fenway as soon as possible.

"Now see down there, that big place on the left? That's Warren Towers" – _Wahren Towahs_ – "where you're gonna be living."

I stared at the massive edifice with its three concrete towers looming over the wide street. I had wanted to be right in the city, but I hadn't envisioned living in an office building.

"I'm gonna park around the corner cause it's wicked crowded out front. Just pullin in here and you can walk across the street."

He swerved into a space near the corner, got out and opened the trunk. I looked at the meter on the dashboard. Whenever I'd seen someone take a taxi on TV, they never had luggage. When it came time to pay the fare, the passenger just handed something through the window to the driver, who was still behind the wheel. I knew you were supposed to include a tip so I rounded up the amount and took a ten from my wallet. He unloaded my suitcase and I handed him the money, then picked up my luggage and typewriter.

"Hey, thanks! Have good life, Dawthy," he grinned and winked.

I waited at the light for a moment, feeling stupid; I'd obviously tipped him too much. Now people were stepping around me and out into traffic. So when there was a lull in the flow I stepped off the curb and took a few brave steps until I saw a car bearing down on me. I scuttled across to the trolley tracks. A train was approaching but other students were crossing blithely over so I followed them, then played the same game of chicken with the cars going in the other direction.

The ground floor of Warren Towers was swarming with students and their parents encumbered with boxes and trunks. I found a desk, gave my name and was handed a key to a room on the 17th floor of Tower A.

I took an escalator and then an elevator to my floor, sharing it with a red-haired girl and her parents. She was clutching a big purple cushion to her chest, the kind with arms that my mother used to sit up in bed. Her own mother and father flanked her, weighed down by large cardboard cartons. She smiled at me when I pushed the button for 17. "We're on the same floor!" she exclaimed. I felt her parents' eyes on me, studying me with interest or maybe trepidation – I was staring at the cushion and the dotted S her long pink nails made as her fingers splayed against the vibrant fabric, framed by flaming curtains of hair. Her father finally cleared his throat and I jerked my head up.

"My name's Sandra," she said. "I'm in room– What's so funny?"

By the time we reached the 17th floor I'd managed to have a normal exchange with Sandra and her parents and I think they were convinced I was an ordinary, wholesome boy from the Midwest.

When the elevator door opened, we stepped out into a corridor filled with students lugging trunks and suitcases, cardboard boxes, turn tables, speakers and bedding. The din was incredible, amplified by the hard surfaces of the white cinderblock walls and linoleum floor. Shell-shocked parents wandered up and down the hall, their arms laden, cutting their eyes right and left as they passed open doors, trying discreetly to check out the population into whose midst they were delivering their son or daughter.

As I walked along counting down the room numbers, I was enveloped by a mad, joyous storm of sound. Music was blasting everywhere, at least on the men's side. It seemed like a contest to show who had the most powerful stereo system.I picked out Boz Scaggs and Genesis but also Talking Heads and Devo. I was thankful my parents hadn't brought me because I wouldn't have been able to contain my glee. When I moved Jenny into her dorm at UMass this fall, I was disappointed at how quiet it was, with all those iPods.

I found my door; it was closed and locked. I fitted the key in the doorknob, opened and walked in. The room was somewhat smaller than the one I'd shared with KE, with a pair of bunk beds, two desks and two dressers against the opposite wall. There was an alcove at one end that served as a closet. The wood furniture was sleekly plain, even moreso than my family's which, although it was old and unadorned, at least had a patina of history.

My roommate had already moved in; his belongings were neatly arranged. I couldn't believe how much stuff he had; it looked like he'd been settled in for more than just a few hours. There was already a poster on the wall over his desk of The Police, from those early days when they had bleached blond hair. When I saw his stereo system filling the space under the window, I was thankful I'd spared myself the humiliation of revealing my little radio and cassette player. Two wooden crates of record albums were set against the wall. Books were lined up along the shelf of his desk, on top of which sat a new-looking Olivetti electric typewriter.

When I finally looked at the window, I gasped. I had never been so high up before. Our room was on the side of the tower nearest Kenmore Square, with a view of the city as well as the river and Cambridge. The sky had darkened with storm clouds and beyond the city, out to sea, I saw streaks of lightning. I picked out the red and white Citgo sign I'd passed. Fat raindrops spattered on the pane and the students and parents milling on the pavement far below began to scurry toward the doors like ants to their nest.

I set my typewriter on the other desk and approached the beds. I had brought only a sleeping bag; my mother was sending me bedding and more clothes. My roommate's still-folded sheets and a blanket were sitting on the top bunk.

On the brown metal guard rail I saw a note on a small yellow square of paper that was somehow clinging to the bar with no tape. I pulled on it and it peeled off easily; when I looked at the back, there was no folded over tape or obvious glue. I touched the paper to the bar again and it stuck immediately. Intrigued, I spent half a minute pulling the tag on and off the bed before I focused on the message:

_Ennis, can I be on top?_

As I was standing there beside my suitcase with the yellow square stuck to my finger, I heard the door open. I turned to see a guy about my height standing in the doorway. He was wearing brown corduroy Levis and a very faded green zippered sweat jacket with a hood that was half covering his head. The jacket was spattered with wet spots from the rain but also with streaks of white paint, as though it was only worn for dirty jobs. It was zipped halfway up, revealing a triangle of yellow T-shirt. His hair was extremely blond, like Sting's, and stuck straight up in front. The color looked strange, because his eyebrows were thick and black and his skin tone didn't match. Even his eyes were not the right blue for that hair.

He grinned at me and said, "Ennis Del _Mar_?"

My family put the stress on Del but it sounded more exotic the way he said it so I didn't correct him. I just stared at him, trying very hard not to say what I was thinking; trying so hard that I forgot to say anything at all for a long moment until I saw his smile begin to fade.

"Joel Angstrom, then?" I said quickly and stuck out my hand. The housing office had sent each entering student the name and home town of his or her roommate during the summer.

"Yup. Nice to meet you, Ennis," he replied, raising an eyebrow at my outstretched hand. He stepped into the room, grabbed my hand and pumped it up and down in an exaggerated manner. "I was wondering if they'd put me with a mute."

"Oh... uh, sorry 'bout that," I mumbled. "I was thinking..." _No don't say it!_ "...that you looked like... like an ear of corn, dressed like that."

Shit! For the second time in one day I'd blurted out something idiotic to a stranger. I felt despair wash over me; I had left behind my home but evidently not my weirdness.

Joel's eyes went wide at my words, but a grin spread over his face too. He closed the door, which had a full-length mirror on it (installed by him, I learned later) and studied his reflection.

"Well, you've got plenty of that where you come from, so you should know," he laughed.

"You _know_ something about Kansas?" I stared at him in astonishment.

"Main Kansas crops are wheat, corn and sorghum. The capital is Topeka, the state flower is the sunflower, state bird is the Western Meadowlark, it has 6 electoral votes... "

I'm glad that I just assumed in those first months that Joel had been an A student in Geography. I didn't know yet that he had the soul of a campaign advance man. But I was stunned and pleased to find myself sharing a space with someone who had retained some facts about my state. But I was also embarrassed.

"I don't know anything about New Jersey," I said apologetically. "Just that Bruce Springsteen is from there."

"Don't worry about it. Hey," he said, glancing at my minimal luggage, "what do your parents think of the room? Are they bringing up the rest of your stuff?"

When I felt myself blushing, I turned away to the window and looked down at the trolley pulling up to the stop in front of the dorm, then toward the tall buildings like gray blocks against the storm-roiled sky. The red triangle of the Citgo sign was the brightest patch of color I could see. Suddenly the taxi driver's misheard words came to me. I took a breath and faced my roommate.

"I came on my own," I said, looking him in the eye. "I don't have much, so I don't need much."

Joel regarded me thoughtfully. I couldn't hold his gaze and looked back down at Kenmore Square.

"It's okay to want things, though, isn't it?" he said softly.

I've come to think of my life before Jack Twist as a barge on a canal, chugging steadily along a flat, still surface. But certain people have been like locks on that canal: a gate closes behind me and a flood lifts me up to a new level. As I stared at the Citgo sign, I felt my heart swelling with a feeling I couldn't then identify. Even now, whenever I look across the river at that triangle filling and emptying, I feel again the sudden pulse of freedom that moved through me at that moment. It was alright for me to desire, even if I didn't quite know what.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

When Ennis got home from the detention center, he and Jay went out onto the back porch to eat the cannolis he'd bought, sitting in the matching director's chairs that Joe had given them when they moved in together. The air was mild, but as the sun slipped behind the other houses they could feel the hint of autumn chill that was due to arrive in earnest soon. From their second floor perch they watched fiery red and gold leaves drifting down from all the neighbors' maples and could hear them rustling as they landed on the freshly swept asphalt below them. Their elderly Japanese landlady was perpetually at war with nature; Mrs. Ono had paved over the back yard of her three-decker so she wouldn't need to cut grass.

"That reminds me," he said while he licked the cream from his fingers. "Can you cut my hair this weekend?"

Jay made a face and reached over to gently box his arm. "You always do that."

"What?"

"Say _that reminds me_ and then go on about something totally unexpected while I'm looking around and wondering what in the world reminded you of that. Sometimes your train of thought is—"

"I know, I know… like the Green Line. It branches off in all directions." It was an old joke between them.

He told Jay about the visit and the cock remark and she agreed to have a go with the scissors the next day. She also mentioned there was a small Indian grocery in Central Square, where she used to live. They had bags of spicy snacks that the men might like.

Saturday morning they cycled down Mass Ave together, as she had an errand to run there too. He could have found the shop with his eyes closed. The aroma of spices was detectable from the curb as he was locking his bike to a parking meter. The shop was small and cramped inside, the shelves piled with sacks of rice, cans of coconut milk, bottles of strange oils and other food he'd never seen before. He found the snacks near the counter and picked out a pack of something called Bombay Mix, which seemed to be composed of fried lentils, chickpeas and some bright yellow squiggly bits.

Also near the counter were bars of soap, individually wrapped in tan paper with gold and white flowers. He picked one up and sniffed it; to his surprise he recognized the unusual fragrance. Jay had a stick of sandalwood on a shelf along with other mementos and this soap smelled like that, only more intense. He took three bars and as he was paying for the items he noticed video cassettes in the glass case by the cash register. He remembered the men had said the TV in the detention center also had a video player. When he inquired about them, the shop owner told him that yes, he did rent Indian films, why? When Ennis explained whom they were for, the man's expression softened. He handed him a list of all the titles, in Hindi it turned out (but written in the western alphabet).

"They can choose from this list. Here, I know this is one they will like," he said, handing Ennis a cassette. "Everybody likes this actor. Take it. You can have three days free."

That evening they watched the movie while Jay cut his hair. Ennis sat on a straight back chair in the middle of newspapers spread on the floor in front of the television. He thought that was overkill – she wasn't supposed to cut that much off. They couldn't understand any of the dialogue but it seemed to be part love story, part action adventure and part musical with a lot of singing and dancing.

"You know what's weird?" Jay said as she snipped away. "You never see the couple kiss. I mean, they do kiss but just before their lips meet it cuts to an exploding flower or they hide behind an umbrella."

In one of the scenes, the lovers embraced at the foot of a wooden staircase outside a house and just at the crucial moment the camera was suddenly under the stairs, shooting through the gaps between the steps so you couldn't see their faces. The director seemed to go to a lot of trouble to block those kisses while making it clear what was going on. What was the big deal?

"I guess a kiss is not just a kiss over there," he said.

"But a sigh is just a sigh, I bet." She handed him a mirror. "Here, have a look."

He gasped.

On Monday morning he took the T to work, leaving early so he could drop Ravi's documents off at his lawyer's office, which was two blocks from South Station on Essex Street.

The firm had several partners, but this lawyer Twist didn't seem to be one of them, going by the plaque on the door. When Ennis walked into the reception area, a man was sitting at the desk, rummaging in the middle drawer. Ennis guessed the guy was several years older than him, but maybe it was just the beard and the suit that made him look more mature. He looked up unsmiling when he heard Ennis enter.

"I have a package for John Twist from one of his clients," Ennis said, holding up the envelope.

The receptionist looked at the parcel and then narrrowed his eyes as he stared at Ennis intently. "Just leave it here and I'll give it to him."

"Well, I'd like to talk to him about the case, actually."

"Mr. Twist isn't in yet."

"I can wait, if he's going to arrive soon."

"And your name is...?"

"Ennis Del Mar. I'm, well, a friend of one of his clients."

The man continued to study him. "And who is that?" he asked suspiciously.

Ennis had had enough. He didn't really have time to talk to the lawyer and didn't particularly want to anyway. "Never mind..." He looked down at the nameplate on the desk. "...Mr Malone. I'll just leave this and call him later." He slid the envelope onto the desk and quickly left. The receptionist's glare had unnerved him.

As he was walking back to the T stop, he glanced at his reflection in a store window and stopped in his tracks. With his black leather jacket and Jay's haircut he looked like a hit man from a Spenser novel. No wonder Randy Malone hadn't let him near John Twist!

Chapter 7b

When she was young, Jenny used to embarrass me in front of company by saying "Daddy, tell about the first time you saw a Post-it note." I think she really did that to hear Jack crack up, even though she didn't know exactly why he was laughing. But one day, when they were both in high school, Junior told her to shut up when she started to ask and then I realized with a pang that now he got the joke.

Anyway, my contemplation of the Citgo sign was soon interrupted by Joel.

"I see you got my note," he said, pointing to my thigh. The yellow square was stuck to my jeans.

I plucked it off, looked at it and pretended to give the matter some thought. "Well, I guess so. Really think you can handle being on top?"

"Hardy har har. Are you that experienced?"

I told him about sharing a room with KE and that we'd had bunk beds. I'd slept on top for years, so it was no big deal for me, but I learned that Joel had never once spent a night in an upper bunk.

It took less than five minutes to put away my clothes, half of which now looked out of place to me. The jeans could pass, but my button snap shirts were way too countrified for this place. I saw Joel eyeing the one I had on, a blue denim shirt I'd had for years. I'd worn it for the bus trip because it was comfortable but also because it wouldn't matter if it got filthy since I considered it to be near the end of its useful life. Though it turned out I was wrong about that.

I felt even more self-conscious when I pulled the sleeping bag out of my knapsack. "My mom's gonna send me some sheets and my winter coat," I explained. "But I think I'll need to buy some other clothes here."

Joel was straddling his desk chair, his arms folded over the back as he watched me.

"How'd you get to Boston?'

"Bus."

"Man, that's a long trip."

"Almost thirty hours."

"Meet any interesting people?"

Now that was a question I didn't expect. To me, the bus was for getting from point A to point... well, it was more like point Z in this case. But I came to learn that for Joel the journey was almost as important as the destination. He liked meeting people; they were like the sparks flying up from a fire. Most would disappear but occasionally one would touch down somewhere and grow a new flame.

"Not really." I was putting my socks and underwear in the top drawer of the dresser. They didn't take up much space. I wondered what we did about laundry. I sat down on the bottom bunk and felt exhaustion creep over me, joining hunger, which had quietly settled in already. I had other questions for Joel, but these two needs were getting the upper hand.

"You wanna go down to lunch in the dining hall or get a sandwich down the street?" he asked.

"Too tired to deal with a lotta people," I mumbled. "Rather go out, get some air."

"Okay." He didn't get up though, but looked out the window. "Still raining."

"Mmm." I was on the verge of keeling over on the mattress.

"Why don't I just go get us both something and bring it back here," he said when he looked back at me and saw my drooping eyelids.

"Sounds good..." I stretched out on the unmade bed, with no pillow, and fell instantly alseep.

….

I woke up in the kind of non-dark you get in a city after sunset. I thought for a moment I was in my room at home, KE's bed above me and the window in the same position opposite. But the light playing over the wall and ceiling reminded me I was somewhere very different.

I stretched and pushed aside my sleeping bag, which was spread over me though I didn't remember unrolling it. I swung my legs off the bed, knowing automatically not to straighten up completely so as not to bang my head. I got up and walked to the window and watched the headlights of the cars moving along Commonwealth Avenue and over the bridges whose names I didn't yet know. Then I realized I was standing beside the crates that held Joel's record collection. I bent and started flipping through them. Suddenly a simple cover caught my eye and I lifted it from the crate. So that was what Patti Smith looked like. In the black and white portrait her slight figure looked so fragile, but her face—

"Psychokiller, qu'est-ce que c'est?"

_Fwwwwiip! Clang!_ "AAAAGGGHHH!"

I'd started so violently that my jerking wrist catapulted the vinyl disk out of the sleeve and it clattered against the guardrail of the top bed. Joel's yelp spun me around and there we were, our mouths and eyes wide open in fright. He was sitting bolt upright in bed. He fumbled a moment and switched on the reading light on the wall next to his head.

"Shit! What the fuck happened?" he yelled. But I was staring at his ears.

"Hey, you have a Walkman?" I blurted out. They'd first come out at the end of my junior year but were expensive; nobody I knew back home had one. No wonder I'd startled him: he'd been lying in bed listening to music – and singing along, it seemed – with his eyes closed so he hadn't noticed me get up.

"Oh yeah, I got it as a graduation present," he said. He pulled out the earphones and held them out to me. I walked over and put them in my own ears, then he handed me the device. _I can't sleep cause my bed's on fire, don't touch me I'm a real live wire..._ Real stereo. I vowed never to tell him about my stethoscope contraption.

"I don't know what the other French bits mean," he said when the song was over and I gave it back to him. "I took Spanish."

"Something like, 'realizing my hopes, I launch myself towards glory.' My French teacher gave extra credit if you translated a song you liked into French," I explained when he gaped at me. "I did that one, but I had to translate the parts that were already in French into English."

"Shit, that's... weird, Ennis."

I shrugged.

"I launch myself towards glory," he repeated. "I like that. Hey, I meant to tell you before, you can call me Joe instead of Joel."

"Oh. Okay... Joe." I paused. "Don't ever call me En, though. I hate that."

"Heh, don't worry!"

"What kind of name is Angstrom?"

"Swedish. But I'm Jewish."

I must have looked as confused as I felt because he added, "My mom's Jewish and that's the half that counts. If only your dad is, even if he has, like, a super Jewish name, you're not a Jew yourself."

"Oh. Well, my parents are Methodists," was my inane response. But that suddenly reminded me that I hadn't called them to let them know I'd arrived safely. I told him what I needed to do and he directed me to the lounge near the elevators, where I'd find an alcove with a pay phone.

The noise level in the hallway was much lower than when I'd arrived but it didn't seem calmer. There was a kind of buzz that I sensed rather than heard. Now I know what it was because when I drove Jenny out to Amherst, we arrived at her dorm late after the other parents had gone and I felt those same vibes again. Jenny obviously picked them up too, because as soon as I'd set down the boxes I was carrying, she said "Thanks, Daddy, have a good trip back, I'll tweet you" and gave me a peck on the cheek. She whispered "I know you'll kiss Daddy Jack for me." Why didn't she just yell it at the top of her lungs? After all, the Residential First Year Experience theme of this dorm was Our Society, Our World and she was living in the My Two Dads suite of the Students with GLBT Parents wing.

Now where was I? Oh, how could I forget: my first phone call home. My mother was frantic with worry and my dad was pissed at me for making her that way. To every "how is...?" question I answered "fine" or "just great". I would fill them in on everything when I came home for Christmas. But hearing their voices told me that there was nothing here they would understand. Still, I gave them the number of the pay phone, which I later came to regret.

When I got back to the room, Joe was unwrapping one of the sandwiches he'd bought us earlier. I didn't really want to go down to the dining hall for dinner anyway, just then. I'd be meeting plenty of new people in the days and weeks to come. For now, one was enough for me


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Ennis arrived at work fifteen minutes late after dropping off Ravi's documents at the law firm. The rest of the staff was standing around a little table in the reception area, so he couldn't slip unnoticed into his office. Lenny, the publisher, seemed to be giving some kind of demonstration but stopped in mid-sentence when Susan gasped.

"God, for a second I thought someone was here to repossess my car!"

"Hey Ennis, did you decide to be a guinea pig at the Blaine School of Hairdressing?

"Halloween's not till the end of the month, Ennis."

"Ha ha, black is so your color, Ennis. You should wear it more often!"

"I wear black every day," he muttered, "in case you hadn't noticed."

He'd expected teasing about his haircut but he hadn't thought it would change his image this much. He hadn't shaved since Friday, so maybe that was a factor. But why had he forgotten to do so this morning?

He went over and stood next to Lureen, who whispered, "We just got a fax machine!"

The first time he'd heard Lenny talking about buying this machine for the magazine, he'd been intrigued. A machine for getting facts sounded so cool. He imagined being able to type in the name of a thing you wanted to know about and it would spit out a sheet of information on it. So he'd been disappointed to find out it just meant you could transmit a facsimile of a document to another machine. Still, being able to send a photocopy across a phone line was pretty amazing. What would they think of next?

The thing on the table looked like a phone attached to a huge answering machine. Lenny held up the sheet of paper, on which was scrawled a phone number and the words, _Hi Frank, testing our new fax machine! RSVP!_ "Now we wait for him to send one back so we know it worked," he said.

They all watched as Lenny demonstrated how to position the sheet of paper face down in a slot, punch in a phone number and push another button that drew the paper through. It came out again from the slot on the other end of the machine. Then the machine coughed out a little strip of paper with a code on it that indicated the transmission had been successful.

Sure enough, after a moment the machine began to hum. The thin paper inched its way out and they could read big black letters. THE EAGLE HAS LANDED!

"This should really cut down on the Fed Ex bills," Lenny exulted.

The art director was smiling broadly; now the designers would be able to use illustrators from outside the Boston area, since they would be able to send their initial sketches instantly and not lose a few days mailing them.

Everybody seemed to feel this new machine would make a difference to their jobs. Maybe he would find a use for it, but Ennis knew it wouldn't make his work any more fulfilling.

Later that morning he went into the small room that doubled as a meeting space and storage room. Tina, the copy editor and one of the designers were at the table with manuscripts spread out in front of them. As he rummaged in the supply cabinet Ennis listened to them discussing the articles for the issue currently in production. They were composing titles and subheads for the shorter ones that belonged to different departments in the magazine. They seemed to be struggling with an article for the Gardening section that advised not pulling all the weeds from a vegetable patch, which he thought was pretty crazy. Everybody knew you should get rid of weeds and okay, maybe this crowd didn't want to spray them with chemicals like his family did for their crops... but just let them grow? Didn't sound logical to him. Plus the titles they were throwing out were pretty dull.

He found the forms he was searching for and closed the cabinet softly, then edged toward the door. He paused with his hand on the doorknob.

"Call it Weed It And Reap," he said suddenly.

Three pairs of eyes turned to stare at him. Mortified, he yanked open the door and hurried to his office, feeling like an idiot. When he saw Don reading the personal ads in the _Phoenix_, though, he felt better. At least he wasn't reduced to that. Ennis thought Don had ridiculously high standards when it came to dating, the kind only the color separation house guy could afford to maintain. Don wasn't bad looking but he could be… peculiar.

"Given up on Lureen, then?"

"Mmm, just checking out the other fish in the sea," Don muttered.

"You never take out an ad yourself?"

"Been thinking about it. But I'd get swamped with responses from women my age."

"Yeah, so?"

"Well, I'd feel bad about rejecting them."

Ennis decided Don wasn't joking.

"Well, why not write an ad for filler in the classifieds?"

Besides circulation, Don managed the classified ads in the back of the magazine. When there was an inch or two of space left over he inserted in-house ads.

"Are you nuts? Just because I work here doesn't mean I want to date any macrobiotic, crystal-wearing New Age chicks!"

"What you do is write a profile that's so over the top it's obviously a joke so only a woman with a sense of humor would answer. Like, um, SWM fruitarian reflexol— no wait... with foot fetish seeks... seeks, uh, anorexic vegan F for... for candlelit... uh, not dinner obviously, um... Scrabble sessions in... You still have that place in New Hampshire? Okay...in spartan lakeside cabin. Why aren't you writing this down?"

Don was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and making a weird keening sound that Ennis knew was laughter. "Ennis, I know you have some deliveries to make," he gasped at last, wiping his eyes. "Hey, before you go..." He leaned down and opened a desk drawer and pulled out a shaving kit – in case Lureen ever deigned to go out for a drink with him after work, Ennis supposed – and tossed it onto Ennis' desk. "So you don't scare the public."

In fact, he had to go to the printer, to pick up the flats and artwork from the issue just out, and the receptionist there probably dealt with scuzzier looking guys every day. He went into the bathroom and shaved anyway, then studied his reflection. He did look less... menacing. He held up a finger to his earlobe, blocking out the little hoop, then lowered it. Should it stay or should it go? He left it.

Finally ready, he first ducked into the storage-conference room and found the box of EastWest sweatshirts that Lenny had ordered and which nobody wore. He chose a green one and put it on under his leather jacket. The color softened the look a little.

On the way back from Taunton, when he was less than a mile from the office, he stopped to get a sandwich in Coolidge Corner. There was a Paperback Booksmith next to the deli and he decided to check out its Travel section. He browsed through a few travel guides to Sri Lanka and bought the one with the most pictures. The beaches there looked idyllic and the women in their saris brightened every picture. It must have been so hard to leave, he thought.

He meant to go back to East West and eat his lunch, but he ended up sitting in the van with the book. The island was located off the southern coast of India and was described as teardrop shaped. Before independence from Britain it was called Ceylon and long before that, Serendip, like serendipity. The guide glossed over the civil war. It seemed the northern end, where most Tamils lived, was not as popular with foreign tourists, even in peaceful times. It looked flatter and less green than the Sinhalese part.

Ennis closed the book, saw the empty sandwich wrapper on his lap. Pastrami on rye was his favorite but he hadn't even been aware of eating it. When he'd said he'd visit again soon, he'd meant in a week, but now he knew he wouldn't wait that long.

Serendipity:The faculty of finding something wonderful when you are not looking for it.

Chapter 8b

"So what happened to your hair?"

"Don't sugar-coat it, Ennis, just give it to me straight."

"OK. You look weird. "

"I was being ironic."

"Oh. Sorry. Not much irony where I'm from. So why'd you dye it?"

We were lying in our beds long after the noises in the rest of the dorm had died down, unable to sleep – me because of my long nap during the day and Joe because back then he couldn't be quiet as long as anyone in the room was conscious.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time. Friend a mine back home bet me fifty bucks I wouldn't bleach my hair like Sting's. But he left for college early and didn't even see it so I never collected. I've gotta keep it like this until I go home for Thanksgiving.`'

I learned that Joe planned to major in political science, just like his older sister who had also gone to BU. She'd graduated in June and he'd spent the summer living in her apartment and scooping ice cream at Quincy Market. Miriam had moved to Washington for a job at the end of the summer, but also to follow her boyfriend. Some of the things in the dorm room were hers, including the record I'd nearly ruined, so Joe wasn't quite as privileged as I'd thought.

During July and August Joe and Miriam had been volunteers on the congressional campaign of a friend of their mother's, a Massachusetts state legislator originally from New Jersey. The Fourth District seat had been held for years by a liberal Jesuit priest but the Vatican had ordered Father Drinan to leave politics. The Democratic primary was in less than two weeks. If he won the primary it normally should guarantee him the seat. But Joe's theory was that because this friend clearly had a New Jersey accent, and that state was next to New York, home of the hated Yankees, there was a question mark. That seemed like crazy reasoning to me, but I'd only been in Boston one day and had a lot to learn.

That led to baseball talk, and I told Joe of my wish to go to a Red Sox game. He said he'd go with me. When I told him I'd played baseball in high school, he guessed which position. I stared up at the bottom of his mattress and felt that... thing. Like with Jack Tornado. But this friend was here and real.

The next morning I finally left the 17th floor, trailing Joe down to breakfast. There was way more choice than I was used to. I ended up taking my usual: eggs, sausage and coffee. Joe had that plus toast, cereal and juice. As we walked away with our trays, a girl at a table waved at us; she looked familiar so we brought our trays over to where she was sitting.

"Hi, remember me? Sandra? You can call me Sandy," she said to me.

Joe pulled out a chair opposite her, sat down and introduced himself. I sat next to him and stared at her in confusion. Her hair was red, not sandy. She was pretty in an ordinary way, with not many freckles for a redhead, but her hair, which was long, thick and wavy, made her striking. She was wearing a dark green top that set it off, and even with no cushion in her arms she looked pillowy. I guess she thought I was staring for another reason because she flipped the hair that was blocking the view over her shoulder and smiled as she took a bite of something bread-like that I'd never seen before. I stared at it, and I think she believed I was mesmerized by her lips as well.

"You missed the floor meeting after dinner," she said, in a way that I only later realized was flirtatious because I'd never been flirted with before.

"Oh. Sorry," I mumbled, and looked down at the scrambled eggs I was pushing around with my fork. They tasted nothing like the ones my mother and our hens made.

Joe came to my rescue and asked her what she was going to major in. When she said maybe French, he grinned.

"Ennis here can say his bed's on fire in French," he declared and thumped my back.

"What kind of bread is that?" I asked her, anxious to change the subject.

"You've never seen a bagel?" Sandy's eyes widened in astonishment.

Of course now you can buy frozen bagels deep in the midwest but back then they were as exotic as kiwis where I was from, and just as unknown. I just shook my head. I'd never even heard the word.

"Is Wonder Bread all you eat in Kansas?" she asked teasingly. "We rode up in the elevator yesterday." This last was directed at Joe, who had raised his black eyebrows in surprise. I looked back and forth between them, thinking their hair made it seem like a faceoff between a lit fuse and molten lava. The way they glared at each other gave me a tiny, startling thrill.

"My mother bakes our bread," I said, breaking the tension. I decided not to mention it was because we lived twenty miles from the nearest store.

"She does? Wow!"

I mentally added a note to my topic list for when I next called my parents: _home baking unknown here._

…

The morning was taken up with freshman orientation so Joe and I separated. I went off to the College of Communication, which was right across the street from Warren Towers, and Joe to the School of General Studies further up Comm Ave. We agreed to meet in front of the dorm at noon because Joe wanted to give me a tour of Boston. It turned out he'd spent a lot of time in the city even before that summer. While his sister had been at BU he'd come up to stay with her during school breaks – anything to get away from New Jersey, where he was bored to death.

"So let's walk to Kenmore Square and take the T from there. If you get on before the train goes underground you have to pay more."

We were back in our room, dropping off the papers and booklets we'd been given. Joe was pointing toward the Citgo Sign in the distance. Even though it was very beautiful, warm day without a cloud in the sky, I felt strangely reluctant to leave the room.

"Take what tea?"

"The subway. You'll see a sign with a big T outside each station. It's color-coded and this is part of the Green Line. After Kenmore Square it splits into three branches so you have to make sure you're on the right train. We're on the C branch."

Kenmore Square was teeming with students. I was still adjusting to being in a big city, with its dirt and noise and smells. I liked the fact that there was so much to look at, so many vertical lines and bright colors and so much movement all around me.

We stopped in the bank that Joe used so I could open an account. I was going to have to choose a work-study job soon, too.

"How much is your work-study grant?" Joe asked while I was filling out the account application. I told him.

"Same as mine. I signed up to work at WBUR. The station manager is a friend of Miriam's and I asked him in July to put my name down cause everybody wants one of those jobs." He paused. "I told him to put your name down, too."

I looked at him in surprise. "But you didn't even know me yet!"

"I knew your name, and if you were on work-study it would be great if we could both work at the radio station since it's right across the street from the dorm. You spend some of the time putting back albums and I'm sure they won't care if you borrow one to tape. Well, I don't think they'll care, as long as you don't walk out the door with a big stack of them. And you don't tell them you're gonna tape it."

After we left the bank we bought slices of pizza in The Pizza Pad and ate them as we walked. Next to the pizzeria was a place called the Rathskeller. Joe saw me looking at the sign and explained that it was a music club and that unfortunately Massachusetts had raised the drinking age to 20 the year before so we had to get fake IDs if we wanted to get in.

"My sister was so lucky, cause it was still at 18 when she started here," he sighed.

I told him it could be worse; our county in Kansas was dry, which meant no one at all could buy alcohol, though that's changed since then. It hadn't stopped high school kids drinking but it made party planning more complicated. I didn't mention that the New Year's Eve party was the only one I'd ever been to.

I was ready to walk a lot after a day and a half of sitting and said so. We carried on to Massachusetts Avenue, then over to Boylston Street. I didn't absorb all of Joe's running commentary, just letting most of it wash over me. There was so much to take in and I knew I had at least four years to learn it all. Plenty of time.

"See that light on top of that bulding? It's green if it's gonna be clear and red if it's gonna rain. And if it's blinking red it means the Sox game is rained out... That's the first public library... That tall building that looks like a big mirror is the Hancock Tower. When it was first built the windows kept popping out cause it was twisting when it was windy... This is the Public Garden. Oh, those are the famous swan boats. Why, you wanna go for a ride on one? Oh yes, you do – I can tell! C'mon I'll… nah, save it for your future girlfriend…This is the Common, that's the State House up there, on Beacon Hill... What do you mean, you've never walked up a hill? Never in your life? No way! Well then let's... no, we'll do that last… See that red line on the pavement? That's the Freedom Trail and it goes past all the big historical sites. You can do that on your own sometime. Today I'm gonna show you stuff that I like.

"Okay let's go down Tremont Street. This is Filene's but the only part I've ever been in is the basement. After a certain number of weeks the clothes that haven't sold upstairs are sent down to the basement with a lower price. After a few days the price is lowered again and it just keeps on going down like that. Miriam spent half her life down there.

"This is Government Center. Oh, that giant teapot's been up there since forever. It's called The Steaming Kettle Building... Come look at this. Before they made this big plaza there were old buildings here and this marks the spot where Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. You know, 'Come here Watson, I need you.'... That's Quincy market, a tourist trap. I worked there at Steve's ice cream… Now we're heading for the North End. It's the oldest part of Boston. We have to go under here to get there. Oh, that's called the Central Artery above us, this big ass road. They keep talking bout redoing it so it's underground but I can't see that happening. It would cost a fortune!... So this is like, the Little Italy of Boston. See that restaurant, The European? Miriam was a waitress in there one summer and the problem is that too many European tourists see that name and they think they can relax and be themselves, right? Well, to them that means they don't have to leave tips. The staff got desperate and put a sign outside in Italian, French and German explaining that you have to tip the waiters and waitresses. What d'ya mean, what's tipping? Haven't you ever eaten in a restaurant? Sorry, a diner is not the same thing. Well, you ready to sit down? Me too. But we won't go to a restaurant today. Let's get something in this café bakery. I'm gonna have a capuccino... It's coffee with foamy milk on top. Really strong coffee. I bet Kansans don't drink cappuccino. Want a cannoli? Those things filled with cream there... Ha, good isn't it? You've got foam on your nose. And cream right… there. Got it.

"Bet you never heard of the Great Molasses Disaster. About sixty years ago a giant tank of molasses on this street exploded and this fifteen foot wave of the stuff destroyed some buildings and a load of people and horses drowned in it. It took them 18 months to clean it all up. Over there's the coast guard base and you can see the USS Constitution across the way.

"You ready to head back? Me too. We'll go to Park Street T stop but we'll go down this way and walk over the top of Beacon Hill. I can't believe you've never walked up a hill... Okay, this street is one of the steepest ones and it'll take us back to the Common. Yeah, that really is the name of it. Nice, isn't it?"

I felt my calf muscles straining as we walked up brick sidewalk together and I smiled to myself. The next time I called her I would tell my mother that in Boston, I'd found a street called Joy.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

If he'd thought to bring the video, soap and Bombay Mix to the office on that Bad Haircut day, Ennis would have gone to the detention center straight from work, especially since he hadn't ridden his bike. But it was just as well he forgot them because he felt he ought to neaten up Jay's hack job before he showed up at the coast guard station. On the way home that evening, he didn't get off the T at Harvard Square but continued on to Porter Square so he could see if Judy Jetson was still open. Back in the days when Judy had cut his hair in her kitchen, he always used to spend a moment trying to guess how to pronounce the last name on the doorbell while he waited for her to buzz him in. It was he who had suggested the new name when she was going to open her own salon, even though she didn't sound a thing like the perky cartoon character. But it seemed to fit her energy.

"Holy shit Ennis, what the fuck happened? You decide to cut your hair yourself when you were stoned or what?" was how she greeted him before she shoved him down into a chair and slung a length of purple polyester over him.

Fortunately, Jay was delighted when he arrived home with his hair even shorter. Or rather, shorter but even. That was when Ennis began to suspect that she'd cut his hair badly on purpose. And at work the next day he got compliments from everyone, although Don's was typically backhanded.

"Much better, Ennis. Now you look like a _cultured_ thug."

That evening there was a new guy at the counter of the pastry shop when he stopped for his cannolis on Hanover Street. Ennis could've sworn the guy winked at him when he handed him his change. He decided this could mean either that he couldn't scare an Italian, who would know a real hit man if he saw one, or... or what? He studied his reflection in the shop window next to the bakery, which was decorated with a Halloween theme. It brought back a memory of his first Halloween in Boston, when he'd had his ear pierced and bought his leather jacket. He turned abruptly from his reflection, worried about the time, and jogged the remaining three blocks to the detention center.

When the three Sri Lankans entered the visiting room, they looked at him in surprise.

"Yeah, I got a haircut yesterday," Ennis began sheepishly. "I guess I did look a little—"

"I am... we are not expecting to see you this week," Kaj said, grinning.

"Well, I said I would come back soon."

"Yes...this is very soon."

They went to their usual places around the table. Ennis told Ravi he had delivered the documents but his lawyer hadn't been in. Ravi shrugged and made a face as if unsurprised. Next Ennis put his knapsack on his lap and unzipped the outer pocket.

"I brought you soap," he said, drawing out the three wrapped bars and setting them on the table. The men picked them up and began to thank him but Ennis said, "Smell it."

Ravi sniffed his and Ragu followed suit.

"Sandalwood," Ravi grinned.

Kaj put the soap under his nose and inhaled deeply, gazing into the middle distance. Ennis noticed his eyes exactly matched the color of the wrapper.

"When very rich or important people in India and Sri Lanka die," Kaj said gravely, looking back at Ennis, "they put some sandalwood when they burn the body."

Ennis felt instantly sick – not at the thought of cremation but from fear that he'd offended him. He took a big breath. "I.. I'm really sorry... I didn't mean to… to…."

"No, it's a good smell," Ravi assured him.

"When Indira Gandhi died you can smell the sandalwood hundred miles away," Kaj said. "Thank you for this."

Next Ennis gave them the video. Their eyes widened and they discussed it excitedly in Tamil, passing it around.

"You know this movie?" Ennis asked.

"No, but the actor is good so the film is good."

Ennis decided not to tell them he'd watched it for fear they'd ask him what he'd thought of it. He was pretty sure they wouldn't laugh if he said he thought that when the women sang they sounded like cats fighting. He just explained about the shop, and showed them the list of films. "They're all in Hindi, though," he said apologetically.

"Doesn't matter," said Kaj. "Even if no subtitles we can understand."

The men spent a few minutes discussing the choices and put an X next to the ones they wanted.

Finally, Ennis took out the packet of Bombay Mix. Aaaahhh. The men fall on it, ripping it open and soon there was no talk, just crunching. Kaj held out the bag to Ennis, offering him some. Ennis wasn't big on hot and spicy but he gamely pinched some of the mix up and put it in his mouth. He tried to keep his face impassive as he chewed but soon his eyes were watering.

"You cry of happiness because it taste so good, yes?" Kaj grinned mischieviously. "Nice and hot!"

Ennis couldn't speak. He needed something to put out the fire in his mouth but there was no water in sight. He opened his knapsack and brought out the box of cannolis, scrabbling at the tape to get it open. Then he sighed with relief as he bit into one and felt the sweet ricotta cheese coat his tongue. The men gaped at him.

"What is this thing?" Ravi asked.

"A cannoli. It's really good," Ennis said. "Have a taste." He passed the second one around and they each took a small bite.

"Nice."

"It's okay."

"Um."

They handed the rest of it —an entire half! – back to him. How can they not love this? Ennis wondered. He returned the cannoli half to the box, which he placed back in his knapsack, and took out the travel guide. He showed it to them, and they paged silently through the book, studying the pictures. Ragu made a short remark, pointing to one of the photos and Kaj responded in a sharp voice. Ragu started to retort but Ravi said something obviously meant to keep the peace. Ennis had wanted to ask them some questions about the civil war, but now he realized that just because they were from the same country didn't mean that they all had much in common. Maybe he shouldn't mention the violence but stick to their personal situations.

"What happened to your arm?" he asked Ravi. His forearm had a long scar and wasn't straight.

Ravi explained that he'd been in the Sri Lankan Air Force and during the 1983 rioting against the Tamils the Sinhalese soldiers in his unit beat him badly and broke his arm. It wasn't set for three days. The papers Ennis had passed to his lawyer contained his Air Force ID, which his wife had mailed to him from Germany. It was proof that he'd been in the military and wasn't a terrorist. There was also a medical report that detailed the extent of his injuries.

Just as Ravi finished his account, Ennis noticed Reverend Beers signing in at the guard's booth. He told the men it was time for him to leave. But he wrote his phone number on three scraps of paper and told them to call him if they wanted him to bring something the next time. He asked Kaj how the campaign to win the Monopoly game was going. Kaj looked pained.

"More Columbians come in yesterday and keep it. So I have to make nice to the new guys," he muttered.

"I might know somebody who has one they can donate," Ennis said.

"Thank you. But still I try to get that one."

"Hello... Ennis is it?" Reverend Beers was suddenly standing by the table. "I almost didn't recognize you."

"Uh, yes ma'am. I'm just leaving, though," Ennis mumbled as he put the travel guide back in his bag.

"Have you taken over for George, then?" she asked pleasantly.

"Well, I'm not sure… Maybe. I guess so, yeah," he finished when he saw Kaj nodding emphatically.

"That's... fine," she said, and Ennis wondered what say she had in whether someone visited the detainees.

Everyone was standing now, and the men shook hands with him, looking almost as self-conscious as he felt, Ennis thought.

As the Red Line train crossed the bridge over the Charles River he watched the Citgo sign and realized he felt happier than he had in a long time.

…

**Chapter 9b**

My first semester at BU would turn out to be the second most confusing time of my life. It was almost as if I'd been transported to a different planet. The university had over 30,000 students, which meant it was larger than the population of Garden City, our nearest town. Warren Towers housed as many students as were in my high school, 1,800. I was surrounded by people all the time, except when I was in our dorm room. Sometimes when I was between classes I would retreat there so I could safely observe the bustling city campus from high above it.

Unlike Joe, who was clear on his major – politics seemed to be the family business, I'd learned – I wasn't sure what I wanted to study. College had simply been a means of escape from home. (Surely my own kids don't view it that way, I tell myself.) I had latched onto the College of Communication at BU because I could write well and I confused that with communicating. The two degree options I was considering were Journalism and Advertising and Public Relations. The first seemed like a no-brainer – there would always be newspapers, right? – while the second one seemed like a stretch for me. But I didn't have to decide just yet.

I floundered around that first semester, though Joe and the other students on our floor didn't realize it. They mistook my quiet, studious ways for focus. By Thanksgiving, however, I was mass of anxiety. It didn't happen overnight, but overtook me in increments.

I'd arrived in Boston on a Wednesday and by the weekend I felt I'd been away from home for months. On Friday we registered for classes and Joe and I went to WBUR to sign up officially for our work-study jobs. To our great disappointment the station manager told us we couldn't work together. The station was allotted 40 hours which they divided among eight students who each worked five hours a week at five dollars an hour. There wasn't enough for two students to do on the same shift. So we went over the week's schedule and each signed up for five hours' worth of work. It included the weekend and I took a two-hour slot on Sunday evenings during a call-in show about cars. I was to screen the calls as they came in.

In the dining hall on Friday evening, I discovered that everyone on our floor knew that I'd never seen the ocean. We now all ate together as a group, with several tables forming a U. I wasn't sure how this had happened so quickly but later I realized that Joe and Sandy had acted as magnets, drawing others to them. For two months mealtimes were a blast, until I said that stupid thing.

Everyone but me was from the East and they all wanted to take me to the beach the very next day since the weather was still hot. Someone proposed going to one that was right near a T stop since it would be easier to organize than taking a train to the north or south shore.

I pretended that I didn't care, that I could wait, no need to make a big deal of it – but I was secretly excited. When Joe had shown me around Boston the day before, I'd had a tantalizing glimpse of the harbor and had almost asked him to take me there. But he'd been too intent on making me climb a hill.

Only six of us sustained the enthusiasm for this outing overnight, but I didn't mind. In the morning I made myself a pair of shorts by cutting off the legs of a pair of my oldest jeans. At eleven o'clock Joe and I waited on the sidewalk outside Warren Towers and were joined by a short guy named Virgil who was in the room next to ours. He looked like Yin to Joe's Yang because he'd dyed his blond hair black. Virgil told us he was a Massachusetts native from "Wusta." When I looked at him blankly he explained, "You know, like Wustasheer sauce."

In the middle of that conversation Sandy walked up to us along with two of her friends and volunteered that she was from Connecticut without mentioning the name of her hometown. Weeks later, after everything went bad, I heard she was from Greenwich. I realized then just how kind she'd been to spare me from having to pronounce that name and felt even more remorseful.

The Green Line car was full of students, like us too excited to sit in the seats. Other passengers looked on indulgently as we hung onto the poles, clowning around and laughing, our glee fueled by the knowledge that at the end of the day out we would not return to our parents.

We rode to Government Center and then changed to the Blue Line. When the train emerged above ground somebody said, "Look Ennis, the sea!"

I looked. And I was disappointed. It must've shown on my face because Sandy touched my arm and said, "It's really only the Bay, Ennis. This is just a little taste. You'll get to a real ocean beach when—"

"Yeah, don't worry Ennis," Joe said. "I'll show you Newburyport if the weather stays this good. We can take the commuter train."

We got off at the Revere Beach stop and walked the two blocks to the water. Even though it was hot already there were few people on the sand. A young seagull on the sea wall was facing off with an abandoned packet of french fries. The edge of the little paper pouch was fluttering in the breeze, making it look like a yawning mouth with flapping lips, daring the bird to snatch a golden morsel. The gull performed an anxious dance, advancing and stretching its neck towards the food then jerking back nervously. We watched and laughed, until one of the girls took pity and went over and tipped out the french fries. The gull had flown off squawking at her approach but soon circled back and attacked them with gusto.

We piled down the stairs to the beach, which was littered with cigarette butts and wrappers and bottle caps. I took off my sneakers and sprinted over to the water's edge where the feeble waves were sloughing off gray foam onto the wet sand. Along with a couple of the others I waded in just enough to wet my ankles. When I saw the scum clinging to my skin I decided I would wait until I went to a real ocean beach before venturing any deeper.

Someone had brought a frisbee so we threw that around for a while. Then we went across the road to Kelly's and discovered why the beach was empty: everyone was waiting in line for roast beef sandwiches. When we finally returned with our food, more students from various colleges had arrived on the beach. A boombox was blasting out the B-52s and two skinny blond girls wearing identical pink sundresses were jumping and gyrating barefoot on the sea wall.

Word got around that this was my first time on a beach and someone yelled, "Let's bury him in the sand!" Before I knew it, Joe had yanked off my t-shirt and I was lying in a shallow indentation that had been quickly scooped out of the sand. Someone advanced the cassette tape to Rock Lobster and a dozen people scrabbled around me in a frenzy, laughing and pushing sand onto my body. I felt embarrassed at first at being the center of attention but as I was powerless to move I had no choice but to stand it. I squinted up at the seagulls wheeling above us and at the planes that roared over the bay every couple of minutes, drowning out the music, as they came in to land at Logan airport.

Soon I was completely covered, and I found I enjoyed feeling the weight pressing down on me. I remember that the sensation of the hands patting the length of my body, muffled by the four inches of sand, was strangely arousing. I didn't think of it at the time, but it was similar to the way I'd felt as a catcher, with the heavy padding on my chest and the pitcher's eyes on me.

Sandy was kneeling by my left shoulder and piling sand higher on my chest. Her long red hair was loose; strands of it drifted in the breeze and tickled my chin. She had on a straw hat with a wide brim that shaded my eyes as well as her face. The smell of coconut from her tanning butter wafted around her, mixing with the fake herbal fragrance emanating from her hair. She was wearing very short cutoffs and a green halter top that supported her full breasts only loosely. I was too clueless to realize she'd deliberately positioned herself so that I could have a clear view of them.

Why wasn't I wasn't conscious of my indifference to Sandy's charms?

When I was a horny teenager, I did think about women. At least, that was what I was convinced I thought about. Except that there was always a man in the picture, never a woman alone. I had an idea of what other boys fantasized about, from overhearing them in the locker room, but somehow I hadn't registered that what I dreamed about was any different.

When I was in the 10th grade, someone brought a copy of _The Godfather_ to school – the novel – and it made the rounds with the page about Sonny Corleone's monster cock dog-eared. Everybody read that scene where he fucks a woman up against the wall, the one with the big... well, let's say they were a perfect fit. So I visualized Sonny and the woman as I jerked off and never admitted to myself that Sonny alone would have been enough.

But back to the beach. Two guys had begun sculpting the damp sand that was being heaped onto me. Joe was at my other shoulder now and he told me they were students from an art school. Everyone else was standing around watching the artists shape the sand, or helping by bringing them plastic cups of seawater to wet it. I could see I was being given a new body.

"Hey, that looks like the guy from Pumping Iron," someone laughed. I was being turned into a muscle man. It took them about 45 minutes to complete my transformation. I couldn't really see it properly but one of the girls from Warren Towers had a camera and took a picture, which is now in one of my mother's photo albums. I'm flexing one gigantic bicep while the other hand is propped on my narrow waist. I'm grinning, my head comically small.

After the photo session, Sandy came and knelt beside me, took one of the cups of water, mixed sand into it and began dribbling little cones on top of "my" nipples. I thought it was funny but Joe, who had been joking around with a couple of people near my feet, suddenly rushed over and flicked them off, muttering, "That's enough. Let's get him out of there before he suffocates", even though I was breathing just fine.

They all dug me out and brushed me off as much as possible. We hung out on the beach a couple more hours before taking the T back to Kenmore Square. Joe and I talked about going out that night, but when I was taking a shower I felt a headache coming on. I looked in the mirror and saw that my face was very pink and by the time I'd staggered back to our room my head felt like a spike had been driven through it and a wave of nausea hit me whenever I moved. I'd stayed in the sun too long. Joe lay wet cloths on my head and pressed an ice pack against my neck as I groaned and whimpered on my bunk. I remember Sandy came to our door, asking how I was, but he wouldn't let her in.

I still feel bad about that.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10A

_Hellooo, this is Kaj... That was your girlfriend? She sounds nice... No special reason, just I'm bored... No, we finish that game. I got my Boardwalk hotel but Ragu still won. I think he was cheating. We go to start another game today, maybe I have better luck... Yes, I use to go to the beach when I am in our house in Colombo. But the other two houses are in Kandy and near Jaffna and not close to a beach... My family has tea factory in Kandy... We grow the tea also. Yes, a plantation. So now you know my family is rich. But look, don't tell Ravi and Ragu. I keep it a secret. The reason I needed the good paper to write to my mother is because she doesn't know I'm in jail. She is thinings I work and live in an apartment with some Tamil guys... No, Boston was not the plan. I was trying to go to Toronto. Lot of Tamils there. First I went to India, to Madras. Then I get a false passport but when I go to buy a plane ticket the flights to Toronto are all booked up for two weeks. But there is one to Boston and when I look on the map I think it's close to Canada and I can get to the border. And Logan is the name of Boston airport and that is my brother's name. So I think maybe it means luck for me. Well, it was not lucky and here I am._

**1987, third week of October**

Ennis got home from work after Jay that evening even though he hadn't gone to the detention center. After cycling over the BU bridge he'd cut through East Cambridge so he could return some videos to the Indian shop in Central Square and get new ones. On the way he'd ridden past The Good News Garage and spotted Tom Magliozzi closing up so he'd stopped to say hello. Tom was as garrulous as ever and joked that if Ennis ever wanted to work the phones again, he was welcome. He claimed that once in a while they got a caller who remembered Ennis from the old days when, for his work-study job in college he answered the phones during the Car Talk on WBUR, who asked what had ever become of him. That had kept him smiling all the way home.

Jay was in the living room working out with barbells. She had to carry more equipment working for the _Herald_ than when she was at the _Cape Cod Times_; when her back started giving her trouble because of it, she decided to start lifting weights. She smiled at him when he walked in but didn't speak; her face and shoulders were shiny with sweat. She'd been working out daily for two weeks and he could see the difference already, and feel it in bed. It didn't really inspire him to join her, though. He'd grown up working hard on the farm and couldn't really see the appeal of lifting chunks of metal for no good reason.

He sat down on the ugly couch and flipped through the mail. There was another reminder from the _New Yorker_ to renew the subscription, the third one since August. It had been a Christmas gift from Jay and the issues arrived relentlessly week after week. Maybe he should mess up the stack of them that was sitting on the side table so that Jay could tell he really was reading them. She thought he only looked at the cartoons but he always read the short story and the movie reviews.

"Did you wipe your key?" Jay smirked after she'd set down the barbells and rolled them into the corner with one bare foot.

"You bet. There's such a thing as too much lubrication."

Mrs Ono had attached a small white rag to a nail driven into the doorjam downstairs with a note above it. _For wipe key. Oiled lock_. Their landlady was maniacal about maintenance.

Jay sashayed over to him, her hand on her hip, and he grinned. She looked funny doing that as she was wearing black spandex bicycle shorts and a blue tank top. She straddled his legs and sat down on his knees, bracing her hands on his shoulders. He flared his nostrils at the pleasant musky, sweaty smell wafting from her skin.

"So. You wanna join me in the shower?" she purred, sliding her thighs along his. The slick spandex made a whispery, slithery sound as it glided over the denim. He sat up straight so she could slide closer and felt his body respond when she kissed him langorously. He combed his fingers through her damp curls. With her new muscles her body felt the way it had when they'd met, when she had swimmer's shoulders and hair cut like this. The memory of those weeks of euphoria and relief prompted a sudden surge down below.

"Why not?" he murmured after she released his lips.

"Hey, I forgot," she said suddenly. "Joe called."

It was like a jet ski had just whined past, its white, churning wake disrupting the rhythm of swelling waves pushing toward shore. Mentioning Joe didn't exactly kill the mood, however. Not at all. Ennis didn't like to dwell on why that was, so he didn't. He sat back and Jay followed, nestling into him and letting her fingertips lightly knead the bulge in his crotch, like a cat's paws on a soft blanket.

"How is he?"

"Excited." Squeeze. "He's jilting Barney for Dukakis."

"Olympia Dukakis?" he gasped.

"Mike Dukakis, dummy," she retorted, sitting up and shifting her weight onto his thighs. She mock smacked his cheek when she saw his grin. The governor of Massachusetts had recently announced he was a candidate for the nomination in the Democratic Party's presidential primaries in 1988.

"Wait, Joe's going to quit Barney? I thought he really liked working for him."

"Actually, he's just going to take a leave of absence to do advance work for the Dukakis campaign."

"I bet he'd be really good at that. But it seems like a lost cause. Nobody'll vote for a guy with a weird ethnic last name like his. That reminds me: can you find a photo of a tornado in the _Herald_ photo files?"

She stared at him blankly. "Reminds you?"

"Sorry. Ethnic names. Tamils. They don't know what a tornado is and I want to show them a picture."

Jay's shoulders slumped and suddenly she felt like a big sack of flour in his lap. "You know, sometimes I wish I'd never gotten you into this thing. It's like you hardly think about anything else – and that guy is always calling."

"He just wants to talk to someone different. It's so boring in there for them. So what about that shower?"

They continued in the bathroom what they'd started in the living room but the flimsy white curtain in the tub-shower kept clinging to their bodies so they finished up in the bedroom, their skin still wet.

Later, while they were changing the damp sheets, Jay told Ennis they'd had an invitation to a Halloween party on Saturday night, one with a theme.

"So you might be forced to wear something other than a cowboy costume," she teased. "Phil said to come as someone or something that's been in the news in 1987."

"Something? That's easy. I can dress all in black and say I'm Tammy Faye Bakker's mascara."

"Or call yourself October 19th," Jay laughed. The stock market had dropped 22% a few days before and was being referred to as Black Monday. "Or wear a white wig and be Andy Warhol." She touched his hand as she spoke the name. The artist had died in February, which had come as a shock to both of them. He and Jay had had a brief but memorable encounter with him not long after they'd first met. Ennis wondered if Warhol had kept that scrap of paper.

"I can still go as a cowboy and call myself Ronald Reagan," Ennis said after a moment. "I'm pretty sure he's been in the news." He couldn't explain to her why he was so attached to that cowboy outfit. Every year he came up with an excuse to wear it. "So what are you gonna be?"

"Probably a paparazzi. Paparazzo? I can annoy all the famous characters at the party."

"Guess it's paparazza for you. But that's kind of cheating."

"I have to work that day so I'll be coming right from the Herald. I'll be too tired to change into a costume."

"Did Joe say when he'd be coming to Boston?"

"The weekend after Halloween," Jay said. She straightened and smiled at him affectionately, her blue eyes twinkling. "That's right, November 7th."

Chapter 10BFirst half of September, 1980

On Sunday, the day after the beach outing, I'd recovered from my bout of sunstroke though my face was still red. I called home at noon and told my mother about the day but she didn't seem excited that I'd seen the Atlantic Ocean, which disappointed me. I would have to send her a picture, I decided, to make it real for her.

In the afternoon, Joe wanted to go to a movie and had one in mind.

"Urban Cowboy?" I said. "Isn't that kind of an oxymoron?"

"Man, you take things too literally, Ennis! It's got John Travolta in it and he's supposed to ride a bull but I bet there'll be dancing. Didn't you get into that whole Saturday Night Fever disco thing when you were in high school?"

"Um, not really." Did I ever not.

We went to see it that afternoon anyway, at a theater at the bottom of Beacon Hill, and Virgil came along at the last minute. Afterwards, he and I agreed the movie was idiotic but Joe was inexplicably taken with it. He even talked about going as Bud Davis for Halloween.

"Look, he's wearing a shirt just like your blue one," he said, pointing at the poster. "Now all I need is a black hat."

"And a wicked big belt buckle," laughed Virgil. "And cowboy boots. Where ya gonna get all that shit around here?"

"We've got all that stuff at home," I said. "My dad spent some time in Texas before he married my mom and did a little rodeoing."

Joe looked at me like I'd said we had buried treasure in the yard.

"I suppose you wanna borrow it," I sighed, rolling my eyes at Virgil. "Okay, I'll ask my mom to send it with the rest of my clothes."

Classes started the next day, and as Joe and I had no courses and virtually no free time in common all week other than at lunch, we saw little each another until late afternoon. He had his first stint at WBUR before I did and told me what to expect, which wasn't much. Just refiling albums, taking Associated Press articles from the telex machine and general gofer work.

That was all I did, too. The station was very small and it didn't seem like they really needed help. I had the feeling the station manager had had work-study students imposed on her. But she told me the Sunday night work during the call-in show would be different. The two brothers who gave advice on cars were kind of crazy, she said, and went off on tangents, taking forever to answer a question. She wanted to try a new system in which someone else answered the phones and wrote down the name and question for them. She hoped that seeing the names of the callers waiting would spur them to get to the point.

Ten minutes before the show was to start that evening, the two hosts had yet to arrive. My stomach turned over when the engineer asked if I knew anything about car repair, in case they didn't show. But he was grinning and the station manager explained that in the three years Ray and Tom had been doing the show they'd never arrived more than 10 minutes before airtime. She installed me by a phone next to the engineer and told me I was to take each call in order, ask the caller's first name, town and the nature of their question. Then I was to write that information as briefly as possible on a large index card, along with the line number and prop it in the window separating us from the studio, wedging it into the crack between the frame and the glass.

An announcer was sitting in one of the two chairs, reading the hourly news. The buttons on the phone were blinking already with calls coming in early. The station manager punched the first one and said "BUR, please hold" into the receiver, then did the same to the other two.

Just then I heard loud voices in the hallway and the door behind me flew open as the news finished and the show was announced. The engineer flipped a switch and some banjo music filled the air. Two men in stained blue work shirts – one about 30 and the other a bit older and bearded – rushed in, yanked open the door to the studio, scrambled into the chairs and jammed headphones over their ears as the announcer jumped out of the way.

"Whew, made it, " panted the older man. "Hello and welcome to Cah Tawk." He had a very strong Boston accent. "I'm Tom here with my brother Ray and we're gonna attempt to give semi-intelligent answers to your automobile questions. Now, you won't believe what we saw on Memorial Drive on the way over here..."

They launched into a long story about an a fender bender but I didn't hear the rest because the engineer pointed to the phone, signaling that I should pick up the first line.

"Hello Car Talk. What is your name, where are you from and–"

A guy with a high voice and a thick Boston accent who spoke very quickly cut me off and gave me the information. I wrote it down on the card and put it against the glass. Then I punched the button for the second line, gave my spiel and took the information, which I struggled to understand, and went on to line three, which to my relief had a caller with a normal accent.

Now I could relax because Tom and Ray were talking to the caller on line one and the other two were on hold. Just then the engineer started laughing and I realized the hosts were too.. When he saw my puzzled look, the engineer turned up the sound so I could hear the broadcast.

"Well, Barrrrb, we gotta explain that our esteemed program manager decided we needed a slave... Sorry! an assistant to answer the phone, thinking that would force us to be more efficient. Haha, fat chance! Anyway, the nice young man who took your call is a BU work study student—"

"And obviously not from Boston cause he thought your name was Bob!"

"Yeah, and so when he... what's your name, kid?" Ray was grinning at me through the glass.

"Ennis," I said, but he couldn't hear me.

"His name's Ennis," the engineer repeated, because the men could hear him through their headphones.

"Ennis? Your folks leave off the D? Haha! So whereya from then, Ennis?"

I wrote KANSAS on a card and held it up.

"Oh my gawd, people he's from Kansas! Hey Ennis, have you ever– Yes? How'd you know I was gonna ask about tornadoes?"

I shrugged and rolled my eyes, which threw them both into another fit of laughter. Suddenly, we heard the sound of a dial tone.

"Uh oh, Barrrb hung up. Sorry Barrrb! Well, lets go to the next caller." Tom squinted at the second card in the window. "Hello and welcome to Car Talk... Calla in... hahahaha! Ennis wrote SUMMAville. Now Ennis, when you hear summa–"

"–or anyword with ah in the middle..."

"–or at the end, you gotta assume there's an R in there."

"But that's only if they got a Boston accent."

"Or an English one. Don't forget the Brits talk funny too."

"Right! So Calla here... wait, is your name actually CARRla?"

"That's right. And I have a question about..."

"It says your Ford Mustang has a radiation leak. Wait, don't tell me you have an atomic car!"

I didn't hear most of this exchange because I was busy answering line one and the engineer had switched off the sound in our booth. Later, when I got back to the dorm, I would find out that Joe had taped the show and that's when I heard how badly I'd screwed up. But while I was there I was too preoccupied with getting the names and car terms right. Which I did less than half the time. Even when the caller had a comprehensible accent I still got town names wrong. Gloucester became Glawster, Leominster Lemonster, which Ray read differently anyway and it set off two minutes of joking about the Honda from Le Monsta. The worst moment for me, but also the one that saved me, was when I took a call and just couldn't figure out what the guy was saying so I wrote exactly what I heard:

Antinny

Gnaw Wood

Toyoter exhausted

When Tom and Ray saw that, the show was pretty much over. They laughed so hard and made so many jokes about me, Norwood, Kansas, Japanese cars, gnawing rodents, ants and lobsters (because I was blushing that hard under my sunburn) that Anthony eventually hung up and the other callers were left on hold until the end of the hour.

Mortified doesn't begin to describe how I felt, especially after I heard Joe's recording back in the dorm room that night. I sat on the edge of my bed with my face in my hands, Joe beside me with the Walkman's volume turned up high so we could hear Tom and Ray's voices without putting on the earphones. He skipped forward again and again to the highlights, nudging my shoulder with his and chuckling whenever they talked about me. Virgil wandered through the open door in at one point; he'd listened to the show and offered to give me a tutorial in understanding his people but I couldn't even laugh. I was sure I would be fired.

When the door had closed behind our neighbor, Joe draped his arm across my shoulders and reassured me, saying those guys obviously liked having a foil to play off. But the warm weight of his arm on me bumped my thoughts from the groove they were wearing out onto a different track, one playing a melody both excitingly new and vaguely familiar. We sat like that for a too short moment, gazing at the lights of downtown Boston, until Joe drew his arm away and stood up.

He was right: Tom and Ray declared that I had to stay. Eventually I refined my "act" and during the four years I was at BU I became very much a presence on their show without ever speaking a word on air.

I threw the cassette in the trash that night, though; I just wanted to forget what I believed then was the worst hour of my life. But when you're young, every humiliation is the worst you've ever suffered, every new love "the one." By the time I returned home for Christmas I would already have learned that everything is relative.

Some years ago one of the staff at WBUR found the "gnaw wood" index card under a cabinet during renovations, proof at last that the anecdote Tom and Ray told over the years whenever someone called in from Norwood was not just one of their tall tales. The station asked Tom and Ray to autograph the back of the card, which they did after insisting that I sign as well. It was laminated and sold at a fundraising auction. I heard someone paid $500 for it.

The following Christmas, Joe sent us a joint present for the first time, instead of just to me. Inside the box was the index card and, most stunning of all, that old cassette tape. He'd kept it all those years without telling me. I invited Tom and Ray over and played it for them and Jack and the kids. We all had a good laugh. Later, when we realized the double tuition payments were going to drain our bank account, Jack put them both up for sale on eBay, describing them as the "Original recording and memento of the very first day of Ennis Del Mar's broadcast career".

It paid for our anniversary trip to Europe this fall.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

_Hello, this is Kaj... I am okay. I am calling say really why yesterday Ragu didn't come out to see you. His sister die last week in that shooting... Yes, that is why we did not talk to you about that article... Thank you for bringing the newspaper like I ask. I saw in your face that you read it... I know you are confused... Sorry, I'm not understanding your question... So? Gandhi was great peace man and Hindu like us. You think Sinhalese going to be nice like Dalai Lama just because buddhist? Anyway, this war not about religion... What you think? Same shit as Irish war, same as Palestine war!... All the people say their religion is for love and peace! You know any religion say "okay, this about war and hate"?... Sorry, I have a bad mood and I'm fucking sick of this place... I know. Don't worry, I call tomorrow and tell you a story._

_When I'm flying to Boston I sleep and have a dream of a cobra. That's when I know my luck will be bad. One time I was with two friends walking in a field and suddenly we see a cobra on the ground in front of us. We shoot it. After that we have a lot of trouble. I am arrested, one of my friends has bad family problems and other one has to leave the country. After my father get me out from prison, one day I'm with the friend who's still there and we are visiting a temple and talk to the swami. We ask him why we are having so many troubles. He think about it and say hmmm, did you kill a cobra lately? We say yes, we shot one a few months ago right near here. Oh he got mad! He shout, "That was a temple cobra! You will have only very bad luck for three more years!"... When? That was February 1985... Well I hope I don't have to wait three months more to get out of here!_

October 1987

Ennis enjoyed Halloween more as an adult than he ever had growing up. His parents had had to drive him and KE and Kathy twenty miles into Garden City to go trick or treating and he'd realized right away that it was more fun for the kids who lived in the neighborhood because the adults greeted them by name and gave them the best candy. They'd only made that special trip twice that he could remember.

At any rate, every year since he'd lived in Boston, something happened on Halloween that was a brand new experience for him. Last year, he and Jay hadn't gone to a party but stayed home and gave out candy. It was Ennis' first time doing this and he'd bought what he'd always wished to receive: whole chocolate bars, not the mini ones. Well, that had been a fiasco. The first kids to come to the door had been amazed and excited by his generosity. But when he went back upstairs, he'd looked out the window and seen them racing down the street, shouting THEY'VE GOT HERSHEY BARS! Thirty seconds later he'd been alarmed to see a mob of at least two dozen kids running towards their house. They'd jostled each other in the doorway, shoving their paper bags and plastic pumpkins at him and he couldn't even see their costumes properly. He'd run out of chocolate with several older boys left; he suspected they were the ones who'd smashed the pumpkin on the porch later.

Maybe this year he would abandon the cowboy costume. The idea of going to the party as Andy Warhol had its appeal; anyone would guess who he was if he could work out the hair. He even called Jack's Joke Shop to see if they had a white wig but all they could offer was a Marilyn Monroe style. So he got out his old blue denim shirt and his father's boots, hat and rodeo buckle, bought a red bandana and became a cowboy again. He added a fringed buckskin jacket against the chill, which he only wore at Halloween because it was so hokey.

The party was in Jamaica Plain, and since he had to take the T there he decided to stop at the detention center on the way to show Kaj and the others his costume. He didn't usually visit them on a Saturday, much less Saturday evening, but he was worried about them. On Monday evening, Kaj had called him, but instead of talking Ennis' ear off he had simply asked him to locate a copy of the _New York Times_ from the previous week and bring it the next time he visited. _As soon as possible_ is what Ennis heard in his voice. The next day at work, Ennis had gone through the stack of papers for recycling and found the issue. Deep inside the front section was a report about a massacre of Tamils in Jaffna. Ennis had read it with sense of foreboding and put off going to see them until Wednesday.

The guard on duty this evening grinned when he saw Ennis. So did the three men when they came out but it was soon clear they didn't understand he was wearing the outfit for a special occasion.

"Now you are looking like a real American," Kaj said.

Ragu looked Ennis up and down and smiled politely. He simply nodded when Ennis mumbled that he was sorry about his sister. Ravi reached out and fingered the buckskin jacket admiringly but otherwise was subdued. Ennis asked how he was.

"Very bad. I have always a headache from the noise and I can't sleep at night because I'm worrying about my wife and daughter," he sighed.

Ennis asked Ravi some questions about his family because he sensed he needed to talk about them. Ravi explained that his wife had moved in with her brother, who also lived in Dusseldorf, when she and their daughter were sent back to Germany. The brother had been Ravi's best friend since childhood and that's how he'd come to know Vimala. Theirs was a love marriage he said proudly, as if it were an achievement.

"I didn't even ask for a dowry. My parents and friends think I am crazy for that." His smile faded when he added, "But I can't forgive myself that I do such a stupid thing to come here. Vimala didn't want to leave Germany. When they catch her in Ireland I should not get on the plane, and then I should not throw away my passport.

"And now I have a bad lawyer. He come here yesterday and say he need a medical report about my injuries from when they beat me. He think the Sinhalese doctor is going to make a record about that? So I ask my wife to ask our German doctor for a letter. That will take more time."

As he listened to his story, Ennis kept his eyes on Ravi but it was Kaj who held his attention. The two detainees were sitting side by side opposite him as usual, but for once Kaj didn't participate in the discussion. Normally he continually interjected himself into an conversation with a joke or explanation, but this time he was silent and pensive, staring into space. His face in repose seemed even more handsome. As Ennis willed himself yet again not to shift his gaze even slightly to the right, realization came at him like a fastball: _He's the reason I come here._ He batted the thought away.

"He should've said he needed that when he told you to get the other documents!" Ennis exclaimed, his voice rising, when he realized Ravi had finished. "I'll call your lawyer next week and talk to him." He realized he sounded more exasperated than he felt.

Before he left he handed them Hershey bars and explained where he was going, dressed the way he was. For the first time that evening, Kaj smiled at him.

It had rained as well as turned to night while he was inside, and Hanover Street was glistening with reflected neon. The sky was beginning to clear, and though no stars could compete with the city lights, the half moon was shining brightly. Ennis stopped for a slice of pizza before leaving the North End, even though he wasn't hungry. He needed to think. He sat by the window and watched people strolling along the sidewalk and studying the menus outside the Italian restaurants. A vampire walked by arm in arm with a zombie.

He was being sucked into other people's lives and it made him nervous. He only ever got close to one person at a time. His mother used to sing that old song, _You Are My Sunshine_, to him after Kathy and KE left home. It drove him crazy, but maybe he had taken that sentiment to heart because that was the way it was with him. One person became his sun, whose warmth drew him closer and closer. And then he got burned. But maybe he was learning how to handle this thing, because it was good with Jay – an even, steady warmth.

As he walked from the T stop to Phil's house, he could see the winking orange lights of jack o' lanterns on porches all the way down the block. Knots of kids in Halloween costumes roamed up and down the streets; he could hear their feet shuffling through the dry leaves and tromping up the wooden stairs of the two-family houses. They were escorted by a mother or father, who lingered on the sidewalk under the streetlight as they stood on the porches of the two-family frame houses and rang the doorbells. His own parents had simply dropped them off in a neighborhood in Garden City and gone off to a movie while the three of them went from house to house dressed as tramps and a princess.

As he walked up the steps to the front porch of the house where Phil shared the ground floor apartment with two other guys, Ennis saw several familiar faces through the living room window, including Michael Jackson. He was attempting to do the Moonwalk for Margaret Thatcher and a few other people who looked familiar, but not because they were friends.

No one seemed to notice Ennis as he slipped inside. That didn't bother him, because he prefered to ease his way into a social gathering, ever since that Halloween party in sophomore year. Tonight he didn't feel like talking to anyone, anyway. The Tamils' grief, frustration and longing weighed on his heart and he didn't know how to shake it off, didn't even know if he was supposed to want to.

The party was crowded already so he had to wend his way slowly to the kitchen to find a beer. He didn't see Jay anywhere. He must know some of these people, he thought, because Phil's roommates had also been at BU, but they only looked familiar because of the people they were impersonating.

He pushed his way back into the living room; the rug had been rolled up against the baseboard and the furniture pushed against the wall to make space for dancing. The beanbag chairs had been piled onto the couch so Ennis stood against the living room wall with his second beer and watched people dancing to Devo. God, did that bring back memories. Then somebody switched the tape and put on Depeche Mode, which changed the energy. Many people drifted away, but Ennis didn't move. The song gave him a pang.

_I'm taking a ride_

_With my best friend_

_I hope he never lets me down again_

_He knows where he's taking me_

_Taking me where I want to be_

_I'm taking a ride_

_With my best friend_

The first time he'd heard it, just a few months before, he'd been driving the East West van along the river on Memorial Drive so naturally the Citgo sign was in full view. What timing. Now he couldn't turn off the music, and it was so loud he couldn't ignore the words. He drained his beer and set the bottle next to the other empties on the book case next to him.

_We're flying high_

_We're watching the world pass us by_

_Never want to come down_

_Never want to put my feet back down_

_On the ground_

He retreated to the kitchen and got a third beer from the fridge, drinking it right there so he wouldn't have to fight his way through the crowd to get another. It was getting hot with all the bodies and the air was thick with smoke of many types. The music was very loud now and people around him were shouting at each other to be heard. It was starting to give him a headache and he wished he could find Jay. He was standing in the space between the propped open kitchen door and the refrigerator; through the gap between the edge of the door and the doorframe he watched a guy dressed as a baseball player kissing Madonna, the platinum blonde version. The man had a cigarette between his fingers as he held her slackly. Ennis could hardly take his eyes off them, they made such an odd pair.

_I'm taking a ride_

_With my best friend_

_I hope he never lets me down again_

_Promises me I'm as safe as houses_

_As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers_

_I hope he never lets me down again_

Suddenly a flash of light lit them up. The couple broke off the kiss and jerked away from each other and Ennis saw Jay standing between them. She was holding her camera and wore a loud flowered shirt under a black leather jacket, amber tinted sunglasses on her head and, most fascinating to him, a thick, black mustache. He couldn't help grinning at her idea of a paparazzo. She continued snapping photos, getting right in their faces and peppering the "stars" with personal questions in an obnoxious nasal voice. Other people noticed and started laughing, but then she pivoted and gave them the same treatment. Someone turned the music way down so everyone could hear.

It was one of the things Ennis admired about Jay, the way she threw herself into whatever she decided to do, and bravely. He knew she was tired after a day's work, and had come to the party as a photographer because it was convenient but she hadn't been lazy about it. She wasn't afraid to say the most surprising things to people. Whereas with him it was mainly accidental.

Suddenly someone that Ennis recognized for two reasons barged through the crowd, making his way toward the kitchen. He was a tubby, dark-haired guy dressed in a rumpled suit and wearing black hornrimmed glasses. He did an exaggerated mincing walk toward Jay.

"Aren't you going to take my picture, young man?" he lisped to her, flapping his wrist. "Ooooh, don't you recognize Barney Fag?"

Ennis remembered this guy from his freshman year and wished he didn't; he'd lived in Warren Towers. He moved from the doorway to get a better look at him and felt his anger rising as the guy - Mike was his name - sidled up to Jay and began to coo at her.

"Wouldn't you like to come back to my place and suck some cock?" he said in a loud whisper.

God he hated this guy! Memories of that first Halloween at BU came surging to the front of his mind, of Mike's sneering taunts to Ennis and Joe about their costumes, comparing them to the Village People, his twisting of Ennis' words the next morning about the girl he'd slept with after the party. Anger began to bubble up in him like a geyser about to erupt. He felt short of breath and his hands clenched and flexed, clenched and flexed. Then he glanced at Jay and the fierce look on her face shocked him. He saw she had her camera strap looped over her wrist, the heavy Nikon swinging back and forth as her eyes blazed.

He took three stomping steps into the room and slammed his fist into Barney's nose, feeling it crunch under his knuckles. Mike's head snapped back as his leather soles slid forward on the varnished wood floor and he landed with such a deep, shuddering thud that the empty beer bottles on the shelf trembled and clinked and one toppled to the floor. Blood gushed from his nose and the sight of it didn't sober Ennis, it enraged him further. He bent and seized the downed man's jacket lapels and made to heave him up but other hands caught at his own and someone hissed _Jesus, Ennis!_ He fought against the restraining arms – he wanted to bash that fucker's doughy face so hard it collapsed, shatter his glasses till his eyeballs went pulpy...

"Ennis! Ennis! Stop!" Jay was at his side, speaking into his ear. The sound of her voice brought him back to reality and he let himself be pulled back. Mike was being raised to sitting position and Madonna pressed a hand towel to his nose. Someone placed the cowboy hat back on Ennis' head; he hadn't even realized it had fallen off.

"He'll be alright," someone said. "You'd better just leave, Ennis."

"Ennis, tell him you're—" Jay began, but Phil was suddenly before them and flapping his hands, shooing them off.

"Later," he whispered. "Just go."

The crowd parted for Ennis and Jay as they headed for the door. The cold air outside was a relief as they walked down the block to Jay's car.

"What _happened_ to you, Ennis?" Jay exclaimed. "I've _never_ seen you get so angry. It's not like you to sucker punch anyone like that!"

Ennis looked at her and smiled to himself. She still had the mustache. "I did it so you wouldn't hit him with your camera. You would've killed him with that thing!" He grinned at her. "Besides, bashing a guy even if he deserves it is against your religion."

Jay stared straight ahead for a few seconds, then looked up at him. "God, I was mad! It's worse when you know Barney, or anyway know a lot about him because of Joe, because he's so brilliant and brave..."

"But you know what really pissed me off?" Ennis grumbled. "Barney doesn't even look like that anymore. He looks really good now that he's lost weight and I can even…"

They had reached the car and Jay went around to unlock the driver's side door. She got in and flipped up the lock on his side. He took off the cowboy hat and tossed it into the back seat before sliding in.

"You can what?" she said as she started the engine. The mustache was crooked and seemed about to fall off.

Ennis slid close to her and cupped her face in his hands, pressing the mustache back onto her lip with his thumbs. Then he kissed her for a long minute, until he couldn't remember what he'd meant to say.

**Chapter 11b**

**First and second weeks of October, 1980**

'_So whadya think of Fenway Park? It's the oldest ballpark in the country still in use... Yup, there's our friend the Citgo sign peeking up there. It's too bad it's not lit up anymore; the governor is such an asshole. Yeah, it's cozy in here... Noooo, that green part doesn't open out for more seats! That's the The Wall!... Sorry, the bleachers are the cheapest seats but I brought some binoculars. Anyway, it doesn't look sold out so maybe we can find some better seats in a little while... See that red seat over there? That marks where the longest ever home run was hit in 1946. Ted Williams whacked the ball way up in the air above the bleachers and when it came down it hit this guy on the head and that's where he was sitting. You gotta pay extra to sit there... Hey, I've gotta go do something, be right back... No, you just stay right here, okay?"_

The next month passed quickly with classes and work filling my days. Joe's candidate won the Democratic primary on September 16th, two days after my Car Talk debacle. He was happy about that and wished he could work on the campaign for the six weeks between the primary and election day on November 4th, but he knew he'd be relegated to indoor work as long as his hair looked so weird. It had grown some and now half an inch of black roots were showing and he looked a bit too... non-mainstream. It wasn't the college kids that Barney Frank needed to win over but rather the blue collar workers in Fall River.

At the very beginning of October, I finally went to a Red Sox game with Joe. It was the first of a four game series against the Toronto Blue Jays (which later struck me as ironic) and Boston's last win of the season. We had tickets for the bleachers but the game wasn't sold out and in the third inning we managed to find better seats closer in. Fenway Park was much smaller than it looked on television. It was my first baseball experience as a live spectator rather than as a player, or as just some guy watching it on TV at home. And it seemed strange to me. So many distractions! People talking all around us, chanting, cheering, passing hotdogs and drinks and change down the row… I was used to either being in my bubble of concentration or watching quietly in our living room with only my father for company.

Before the game started, Joe disappeared for a little while and wouldn't say where he was going. When he returned, he handed me a program. He'd gone to the seats near the dugout where Sox players were signing autographs to get the catcher, Rich Gedman, to sign his photo. It was his first season in the major leagues. He was barely older than me and he would stay with the Red Sox until 1990. Because of that autograph, and what it came to mean to me, I paid attention to Gedman's fortunes. I hadn't thought of him since 1989, when he was demoted to replacement catcher and my life with Jack began. But recently I looked him up on one of those baseball sites that has every fact and figure about every player and team since the beginning of time. His highs and lows didn't exactly mirror my own from that decade, but they brought back memories as I read through the dates.

I had an essay writing class with Sandy that term and found myself talking to her more often outside the dining hall. She was a big reader too, and we often discussed books. I told her about my childhood obsession with islands and Robinson Crusoe. Sandy knew how to sail, and her uncle was on the board of directors of Community Boating on the Charles River; she had a pass to use a sailboat anytime and offered to take me out in one.

So one afternoon in October when our professor was out sick we went sailing. It was one of those perfect autumn days when Boston seems like the best city in the world. The sky was cloudless, the air clear and only a little cool. The Hancock Tower reflected blue on all sides and seemed to almost disappear. The trees were ablaze with color. The leaves turn in Kansas of course, but the few trees that grew where my family lived were dwarfed by the sky. The trees in Boston seemed more assertive, more in your face; that first autumn in the city I felt as though each one was shouting at me.

Sandy reminded me of those trees because of the vividness of her copper hair and the clothes she wore to set it off – deep greens, rich browns and gold. I could always spot her a long way off, which gave me time to decide whether I wanted to talk to her – and take evasive action if I didn't. So whenever our paths did cross, I was receptive and had my wits about me. In hindsight, I think it would've been better if she'd had more experience with the real me.

I enjoyed that afternoon on the river, sailing back and forth between the Mass Ave Bridge and the Charles Street Bridge. It was oddly soothing to have open space around me again. Sandy and I talked a little about what we were reading; she was taking an English literature course and loved Tennyson. I didn't even know who that was then. She recited some lines from a poem about a woman in a boat going to Camelot. It did nothing for me, but she said there was a famous painting based on it and she was going to go as that woman to the Halloween party in the Student Union. Her aunt was an expert seamstress and was making the dress for her.

I was only half listening. I kept looking over her shoulder at the scarlet and gold trees on the Cambridge side and then back at her. Her hair clashed mightily with the orange life vest, but even so she reminded me of the maples and oaks, with her tan windbreaker and dark yellow bandana holding her hair back from her face.

She looked at me quizzically."What?"

I tried out several responses in my mind. _You look just like those trees_. _Those trees look remarkably like you_. But I couldn't sit there like an idiot forever trying to find the right words, ones that wouldn't startle, so I just shrugged and smiled.

"I'd like to learn to sail one of these," I said.

"I'll teach you in the spring."

I'm sure she was smiling when she said this, but I wasn't looking at her. I was taking in the city skyline, listening to the water lapping, watching a Red Line train trundle over the Charles Street Bridge, the other white sails gliding past us and the three towers of our dorm in the distance. A big package had arrived for me that day and I knew it contained my father's rodeo things. That evening I'd be able to give the cowboy boots and hat to Joe and watch him try them on. He'd started sneaking albums from the radio station and we were going to tape some that night. It would turn out to be a really great day, I was sure.

If I'd looked at Sandy, maybe her expression would have told me it was also a good day to fall in love. All the ingredients were there: a sailboat, perfect weather and a pretty, smart girl who liked many of the same things I did. But I didn't look at her, didn't even think about her at that moment.

This past November when Jack and I had returned to London after our travels through Spain, we went to the Tate Gallery the afternoon of our last day before flying back to Boston. We wandered into the rooms with the Pre-Raphaelites and as I turned a corner I stopped in my tracks before a painting. I'd never seen it before but I knew immediately it was _The Lady of Shalott_. Sandy's aunt had made a perfect replica of her dress.

I must have said "Oh my God" because Jack came up to me and asked what it was this time. He was used to this by now: everywhere we'd gone in Europe there had been odd reminders of my life before he entered it for good.

"Tell you later," I muttered and continued on, while Jack stood for a moment trying to decrypt the picture of a sad redhaired woman in a boat.

When we were back outside, I told him about the first girl I slept with and what had happened afterwards. By the time I'd finished the story, we were standing on Vauxhall Bridge watching the barges pass beneath and the street lights blinking on as the gray sky darkened.

"If only the world had been like it is now when I was eighteen," I sighed, smoothing my hand down his back for emphasis. "Maybe I wouldn't have had to humiliate that poor girl."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Christ Ennis! It's not what you did but what you said! No wonder she pasted you good. I woulda done the same thing, you said that about me."

"Like I would've, dumbass! And anyway, she didn't hear what I actually said."

"It wasn't a whole lot better, Ennis."

"I guess not. Wish I could tell her I'm sorry."

"You never did?"

"She changed dorms, dropped the class we both took and then transferred. I don't even remember her last name and neither does Joe so I can't Google her."

"Maybe there's a way," Jack said after a moment. "But we need a postcard."

We went back to the Tate and bought a card of that painting. After our farewell dinner with our hosts that night, I wrote the message while Jack went online to find the address. I mailed it just outside of Victoria station, not even waiting until we got back to the US.

I've been checking ever since.

See the postcard: ** /tate-postsecret**


	12. Chapter 12

First week of November, 1987

_Hellooo, this is Kaj... I am okay. Just I call to tell you that Ravi's lawyer came to see him yesterday... So you don't even talk to him? Just leave a message? Haha then you are a powerful guy! He ask Ravi about you... Yes he wants to know who is this guy Ennis Del Mar. Ravi told him you are hero of the Tamils. Haha just joking. Ravi tell him... okay told him – sorry about my bad English but you know all the people stuck in here are speaking bad English so how can I learn? You have to correct me more. Ravi told him you are a good guy, very nice and helping us. He want to know what is your job, where you are living. Ravi say he doesn't know. Which is true because he's not calling you all the time haha. He ask your phone number... asks... but Ravi lie and... lies... say he don't have it... I change my mind, don't correct all my mistakes!... He thinks if you want the lawyer to have your number you can give it yourself. Anyway, we stop about that. I want to tell you a story.___

_When I am sixteen I have a girlfriend in Colombo... What you don't believe? Sri Lanka's not the west but not like India either. Boyfriends and girlfriends go around together, but decently. One day we go to the beach, we take the bus. I have a gold ring that was belonging to my grandfather that my mother give to me. My girlfriend ask to wear it and I let her. So we are on the beach... no not swimming just walking and talking. Then we go back. When we are almost to her house my girlfriend suddenly see the ring is not on her finger and start to cry. I am really angry – my mother will want to kill me! Already I'm tired of this girlfriend but now I will have to see her again next day to go back to the beach to find the ring. So next day we go there on my brother's motorbike. I sit in the sand and she walk up and down the beach looking and looking for almost one hour. Finally she come and sit down next to me. She put her head on my shoulder and she's crying because she is really lost the ring. I'm getting fed up with the crying. I look away from her and see next to me is a big palm tree leaf. I turn it over, no reason just bored. Guess what is there in the sand... the ring! All the time it is right by my side and I don't know it.__  
_

As soon as he got into work the Monday after Halloween, Ennis called Ravi's lawyer. He realized his case was complicated but it seemed like John Twist was not taking it seriously. Ennis knew he was doing the work pro bono so he wasn't surprised that it wasn't a top priority, but still it was dragging on too long.

The receptionist he'd seen a few weeks before answered the phone, the one who'd been so suspicious of him. Ennis gave his name and asked very politely if he might speak to John Twist. Randy Malone told him curtly that he wasn't in yet. When would he be in? Sometime in the morning.

Ennis was getting pissed off. "I need to speak to him about one of his clients, S. Ravindran, who's applying for political asylum and has been in detention for months. His case is going very slowly and Ravi... Mr Ravindran is getting really desperate. He needs... " Ennis decided to change tack. "I want to know if there's anything I can do to help advance things. Help get documents from abroad or anything like that."

The receptionist simply said, "I'll give him the message." But Ennis didn't trust him. Suddenly he had an idea.

"Why don't I fax him a note?" he suggested. It would be great if he could deal with this lawyer without actually having to talk to him – or to this jerk Malone.

"Fine. The fax number is 424-5123."

After he hung up, Ennis typed out a short letter introducing himself and offering his help. Then he went to Susan's desk and sent his first fax.

He didn't receive a reply, but the next evening he heard from Kaj that John Twist had been in to see Ravi that day and had fished for information about Ennis. So that was the way it was going to go.

When he walked into the office on Friday morning, Tina was sitting at his desk chatting with Don. She was trying to convince him to get his ear pierced and wear an earring.

"You need to spice yourself up, Don," she said. "You're too boring. No wonder Lureen won't give you a chance."

"Am I that obvious?" Don sighed.

"Yes, you are. Look at Ennis here; he looks great with an earring. And hey, that scarf is pretty cool."

The Tamils had complained about their yellow jump suits and ribbed Ennis about his penchant for wearing dark clothes, so since Fall had turned chilly he'd taken to wearing a yellow and scarlet mohair muffler, partly as a joke when he went to see them, partly in secret solidarity with them. The scarf belonged to Jay, who never wore it. She said it was the only thing she'd ever knitted.

"Yeah, but he's twenty-five. It's practically illegal for a guy his age not to have an earring, " Don retorted. "And I'd look like the Cat in the Hat with that striped thing around my neck."

"He'll be twenty-six tomorrow. Happy Birthday in advance, Ennis!" she said as she rose from his chair. She spun it around to him with a flourish.

"Thanks," he smiled.

He sat down in the chair and Tina pushed it to the desk.

"I came in to ask you if you wanted to come to a department heads meeting," she said.

"I'm the only one in my department."

"No, I mean come help think up headlines and subheads for the articles in the regular departments. For the January issue. You know, we used that one you tossed out last month. It was really clever. The three of us are kind of burned out and it might help to have some new blood."

"Well, sure. That might be interesting," he replied, thinking _Yessss!_ But in the next instant: _God how pathetic, getting excited about writing headlines when you have a journalism degree._ But still... it was something.

"Look, here are the copy-edited manuscripts to look over. Come to the meeting room at eleven, okay? After that we're all going take you out to lunch."

The headline meeting went well. It was harder than he'd expected, because of the space and style constraints, but half the headlines the editors ended up using were all or partially his ideas and Tina said that thanks to him they'd finished much sooner than they usually did.

Afterwards, they asked him where he wanted to eat lunch. The Colorado Public Library? The Village Smokehouse? They knew he liked plain food. But today he surprised them all. After several weeks of sharing Bombay Mix at the detention center he had recently graduated to the hotter Madras Mix and he thought he might like to try the Thai restaurant two blocks away.

Don raised an eyebrow. "I thought an earring was enough spice for you," he said dryly.

In the afternoon he had to pick up cartons of books from a distributor near South Station. While he was there he stopped to buy train tickets to Philadelphia for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which he and Jay were going to spend with her parents.

As he was walking back to the van, Ennis saw a bearded man coming towards him who looked familiar, especially his scowl. He was walking hunched against the damp chill with his hands deep in the pockets of his long black overcoat, a knit wool hat pulled low on his brow, glaring at the sidewalk. As he drew near, the man looked up at Ennis; he'd guessed right — it was indeed the unpleasant receptionist from the law firm. Ennis reluctantly slowed, and so did Randy Malone, who seemed to start when he saw him. Ennis hesitated, then stopped; he felt he owed it to Ravi to make another attempt to see his lawyer.

"Uh, hi. Do you remember me? I'm Ennis Del Mar."

Malone stood stock still, frowning and making no move to shake hands. His gaze skittered over Ennis' face and shoulders, catching on his earring, lingering on his striped scarf.

"I've been trying to contact one of the lawyers where you work, John Twist," Ennis ploughed on. "About a man from Sri Lanka with an asylum request? I sent a fax on Monday. Is he in his office today? I'd like to meet with him and— "

"John Twist isn't even a lawyer," Malone said scornfully. "He's only a paralegal, couldn't cut it in law school. He just does the legwork for the partners. So don't be surprised if the case is all fucked up."

Ennis was completely taken aback by this outburst — it was the most Malone had ever said to him. He was indignant to learn that Ravi's lawyer was handing off most of the work to a flunky, but part of him empathized with Twist. He himself was stuck on a low rung, his career stalled at the bottom. He didn't understand, though, why Malone was so contemptuous of him.

He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. "I don't mind meeting with a paralegal. I'm just trying to help Ravi... Mr Ravindran."

Malone looked away from him, watching a police car speed down the street, his brow deeply furrowed. "I think you should just let Twist be, let him do his job," he said when he finally looked back at Ennis, who suddenly realized Malone's accent was just like Lureen's. "He's not very social and he's got a lot to do. He has your fax number and if he needs you to do something I'm sure he'll get in touch. Excuse me, I have to get back to the office."

He watched Malone trudge away. Why would that guy care that John Twist wasn't sociable? He wasn't setting much of an example himself. He knew now that Twist was curious about him but for whatever reason chose not to contact Ennis directly. Was he embarrassed to reveal he wasn't a real lawyer? At any rate, Ennis wouldn't risk lowering Ravi's morale by relaying this fact.

After work he went by the detention center. It was a good visit; Kaj's lawyer had heard from Canada — there would be a decision rendered on his case in February. Ragu had learned he would have his hearing before the US judge just before Christmas and Ravi was more cheerful because his lawyer seemed to be moving on his case – thanks to Ennis, he said. And it was Ravi's birthday that day; he was 28, born 06-11-60, the same forwards and backwards, which was supposed to be lucky. Except it clearly didn't work in America, where they wrote the date the wrong way. Ennis told him his own was the next day and that he was two years younger. They grinned and shook hands.

When he got home that evening, Jay was out but she'd left a note. Joe had to stay in Washington. He wouldn't be coming to Boston after all.

Chapter 12b

Third week of October, 1980

"Draw, podner! Bam bam bam!"

"Don't think you call a guy you're gonna shoot 'podner'."

Joe, Virgil and I were hanging out in the 17th floor lounge on a very rainy Friday night. A few other people were clustered around the TV in the corner watching The Dukes of Hazzard. Joe was modeling my dad's cowboy hat for something like the tenth time that week. The boots fit him well enough, and he'd attached the rodeo buckle to his own belt. He'd bought a red bandana, and since it had started getting chilly he'd been talking about finding a jacket to go with it, maybe one of those buckskin ones with the fringes.

"Oh. Okay. Ummm...then… You gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

"Wrong Clint Eastwood flic you dork!" Virgil guffawed.

I laughed along with them but I was actually preoccupied with the dorkiness of my own tan corduroy jacket, which my mother had included in the box. I'd worn it through high school but here it stood out in all its Kansas plainness. I felt it was time for a change.

Several times I'd wandered over to Kenmore Square to gaze in the window of a shop that sold leather jackets, all of them black. I really, really wanted one but I was nervous about going in by myself to try one on. I wanted Joe to come with me but I didn't want to just ask him to go shopping with me. I would have to work it into a conversation.

Fortunately, Virgil created that opportunity just then when he asked me what I was going to wear for Halloween.

"Well... I dunno... something simple, with clothes I can wear on normal days," I pretended to muse. "Like, a biker maybe?"

"You got a leather jacket?" Virgil asked skeptically.

"No, but I need a new jacket and maybe I should get a leather one. It's supposed to be good at stopping the wind and it sure is windy in Boston."

Of course wind was a famous feature of the Kansas plain even without the tornadoes, but they didn't know that.

"There's a place in Kenmore Square that sells leather stuff," Joe said.

"You mean that place next to the bank?" I said innocently.

"Yeah, we can go check it out tomorrow if you want."

So Saturday morning we wandered over to Kenmore Square. The shop had an intoxicating animal smell without the accompanying odors I was used to. Even as I tried on one jacket after another I knew I couldn't afford any of them. But I was enjoying looking at myself in the mirror, fascinated at how they transformed me. Joe made encouraging comments on most of them.

I was especially attracted to a jacket that had lots of zippered pockets, big lapels and a kind of belt in front. The plain, unadorned style didn't interest me. But Joe seemed skeptical. And when I tried on a black, peaked leather cap with a stiff brim, he looked aghast.

"No, Ennis, you don't want _that_ one," he declared.

"Why not?" I murmured, admiring myself in the mirror. I realized I'd gained a little weight since I'd been at BU. I was eating a bit more than I had at home and I no longer had farm work to tend to at the end of the day. I'd been skinny as a rail before and it seemed to me that I looked better filled out some. I'd stripped down to a white t-shirt to try on the jacket and was wearing my usual Levis. I thought I looked quite macho, for me, and said so.

"There's macho and there's macho," he said cryptically. "Anyway, do you really wanna pay three hundred bucks for a jacket?"

Much, much later I'd be able to but not then. Joe suggested we go to a place in Cambridge that had just opened earlier that year and sold clothes for a dollar a pound.

Needless to say, I was skeptical. "That where you got that cruddy green sweatshirt you were wearing the first day?"

"Nah, that used to be my Dad's. This place kinda looks like an old factory. They collect clothes from all over, shred them up and sell bales of rags to industries that use them in manufacturing. But on Saturday morning they let you go in and pick out what you want and then they weigh it. I went there once with Miriam and she got some great stuff. They had all kinds of coats and jackets and I saw some leather ones that time."

So we took the T to Kendall Square and walked up Broadway past MIT until we came to a non-descript building with a hand painted sign that said simply _Rags $1 a pound_. Just inside the entrance a man with a cigar handed us each a black trash bag.

The floor of the dingy, cavernous room was a deep, colorful sea of clothing with dozens of people wading through it, trailing plastic bags like ours, bending and stooping to inspect a garment they'd fished out and then either dropping it or stuffing it into the sack. Along the edges of the room were bins with more clothing and long metal rods sagging with the weight of coats and jackets. I stood there gaping at the people of all ages scavenging in the piles, not sure what to make of it. Back home, no one would dream of outfitting themselves this way. A church rummage sale was fine because it was for a good cause but going to Goodwill or the Salvation Army for clothes for yourself or your family was a sign of desperation. This was at least a notch below that. Yet this crowd didn't seem dirt poor. More like eccentric. Still, it wouldn't hurt to look.

Amazingly, we did find a leather jacket that was halfway between Brando and Fonzie and was in pretty good condition except for a ripped lining. I hefted it in my hand and reckoned it would cost me four dollars, tops. Then we waded into the mass of clothes on the floor to see what else we could find. I nearly stepped on a sleeping baby whose mother had laid it down next to her – it blended right into the clothing.

I came across a pair of black jeans that looked like they might fit me. A few people were stripping off right there to try on garments, which seemed silly since they'd only be set back fifty cents if they found they didn't fit later. I stuffed other shirts and jeans in my bag and saw that Joe was doing the same. When he wasn't looking, I shrugged off my tan jacket and left it on the pile.

When I found Joe again, he was back among the coats. He had on a long, stone colored parka with a hood and was browsing among the jackets.

"You gonna get that thing?" I asked.

"Well, it seems brand new," he said. "And my winter coat is really old."

"You don't look good in that color."

"I don't?" He gave me a funny look. At the time I thought he was questioning my color sense, but now I understand that he was startled that I noticed, and cared, whether he looked good. "Well, I think I'll get it anyway since it's such a deal, maybe give it to my Dad."

I pulled out a shorter, blue parka from the bin. "Try this one."

Joe took off the gray coat and we traded. I tried on the long one just out of curiosity. It was still warm from his body. Joe was right, it was good quality, filled with down and not feathers. But the blue one fit him well and looked better on him, even with his yellow hair.

After we'd weighed and paid we emerged blinking back out into the bright sun. It was another jewel of a day, the air clear after the overnight rain with just a touch of crispness. The sunlight pouring through the sycamore by the curb set the yellow leaves aglow. As we walked back toward Kendall Square, I noticed some words spray painted neatly onto a building at waist level, as if done with a stencil. MISSON OF BURMA. I'd seen this marked on walls in several places since I'd arrived in Boston. I gestured at them and asked if Joe knew what it meant.

"I think it's the name of a band. I saw it on the marquee of the Paradise once," he replied, referring to a club a few blocks from BU. Joe was still working on getting us fake IDs so we could get into it and other music bars.

When we reached the T stop, Joe suggested that instead of riding back we could walk along the river to the Mass. Ave. bridge and cross over to Boston. There was something he wanted to show me.

Joggers swerved around us onto the grass as we walked side by side along the sidewalk at the water's edge, the river on our left, MIT buildings on our right, our sacks slung over our shoulders like we were tramps. Dozens of white sails glided back and forth along the Charles. I hadn't told Joe about my day sailing with Sandy so I mentioned it now, and how I'd enjoyed being out on the water.

"You didn't have to go all the way down to Community Boating, you know. There's a sailing club at BU. You just gotta take a swim test and pay for a sailing card. They'll give you lessons. Then you can take a sailboat out from the pavilion by the BU bridge. Miriam's boyfriend learned to sail there."

Was there anything Joe didn't know about? For the first time I felt irritation instead of admiration.

"But Sandy has connections and can take a boat out for free."

"Okay but I'm just saying."

I changed the subject and we talked about classes and music and a little about politics. Joe was resigned to Reagan taking the White House in two weeks but optimistic about Barney Frank's chances. At that point in my life I was apolitical and anyway, I wouldn't turn eighteen until just after the election.

We turned onto the Mass. Ave. bridge and a moment later Joe stopped and pointed down at the sidewalk. The words 364.4 SMOOTS + 1 EAR were painted in big yellow letters.

"Back in the fifties a bunch of students in an MIT fraternity measured the bridge with a guy whose last name was Smoot," Joe explained. "Ever since then the members repaint the marks every year. That's why the lettering looks raised."

"The city didn't mind?"

He rolled his eyes. "Who cares if they mind? You do something long enough here, it turns into a tradition and nobody can stop it. Wouldn't it be great to have your name immortalized like that?"

I looked sharply at him, sure he was joking. He had a faraway look on his face. "Yeah, but... your name already _is_ a unit of measurement."

"That's not what I mean! I didn't have anything to do with the naming of zero point one of a nanometer. Anyway, how many people measure things in angstroms?"

"Uh, molecular scientists?"

"Yeah, well I'd rather have hundreds of regular folks see my name every day on their way to work than thousands of scientists in labs."

Back then I was sure Joe was going to be famous someday because he seemed perfectly ready to be the object of a fraternity prank if it meant he'd get his name before the public. But for as long as I've known him, whenever he's had the chance to step out in front of the curtain, instead of staying backstage working the ropes, he's hesitated. For a long time I thought he was just indecisive.

Sometimes I torture myself by imagining how his life would have gone if I'd said one little thing at certain points in our friendship, if I'd veered off from the script he was determined to follow. I don't know why I still kept quiet when he told me last year that he was getting married yet again. It was too late for us by a long shot, but it's not too late for him.


End file.
